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Looking at BookScan: 2015

2015 Overview

An initial overall note on this year’s chart: I continue to cut out anything that clearly wasn’t a “comic” (though such definitions are sometimes difficult to make). For instance, the #1 & #2 books of the year — The “Dork Diaries” volumes (and more on that below) are not really a “comic” — they have words, they have pictures, but they don’t work together in the way I’d think we’d commonly agree is “comics.” However, it’s just close enough that I decided to keep it. Much less controversial (I’d imagine) is my decision to remove prose-driven books like DK Publishing’s “Marvel Encyclopedia” (47,9642 sold in 2015), which, while nominally about comics or comics culture, is factually an encyclopedic prose book with pictures. Or “Dork Diaries:OMG! All About Me! Diary” (33,811 sold in 2015) which is actually a branded write-in Journal, or “DC Super Heroes: My First Book of Girl Power” (18,189 copies sold in 2015) where the Amazon “Look Inside” clearly shows is an illustrated reader for 2nd graders. There is clearly an enormous market for this kind of material — in fact, in many cases a larger market than for the actual comics themselves — it just isn’t the “comics” market, as I would define it.

In all, I removed 27 items from the Top 750 that didn’t match my personal definition of “comics,” to make room for 27 items that I think are comics. However, if there was a legitimate question about it, like our #1 book, I erred on the side of keeping it.

Here’s the big picture for the Top 750 in 2015:

Year

Total Units

Growth

Total Dollars

Growth

2003

5,495,584

—–

$66,729,053

—–

2004

6,071,123

10.5%

$67,783,487

1.6%

2005

7,007,345

15.4%

$75,459,669

11.3%

2006

8,395,195

19.8%

$90,411,902

19.8%

2007

8,584,317

2.3%

$95,174,425

5.27%

2008

8,334,276

-2.9%

$101,361,173

6.5%

2009

7,634,453

-8.4%

$93,216,014

-8.0%

2010

6,414,336

-15.9%

$85,266,166

-8.5%

2011

5,696,163

-11.2%

$79,961,951

-6.2%

2012

5,696,163

-4.53%

$89,918,354

12.45%

2013

5,654,351

3.97%

$96,062,709

6.83%

2014

6,659,031

17.77%

$112,768,709

17.39%

2015

*8,762,983

31.60%

$141,226,518

25.24%

So, yeah, that’s an astonishing level of growth in 2015, and it brings the Top 750 to the highest numbers it has ever charted in the history of this exercise. Amazing performance, and perhaps the clearest sign we can show of the transformation of comics material to Legitimate Art Form.

The trend for books in general through BookScan appears to be a general growth of 2.8% — which makes comics-material far far stronger than the curve. Clearly both print is dead, and comics are doomed — tell your friends!

There’s now probably too many live-action media based on comics and super heroes. In 2015, Television alone had six continuing shows with “The Walking Dead,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, “Agent Carter, “Arrow,” “The Flash,” and “Gotham” while it added five new series: “Daredevil” “iZombie,” “Jessica Jones,” “Powers” and “Supergirl.” 2016 is going to add six more: “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Lucifer,” “Luke Cage,” “Outcast” “Preacher” and “Wynonna Earp!” Sheesh!

2015 movies brought us a smaller than usual crop — just “Ant-Man,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Fantastic Four,” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

It is often very difficult to draw a straight line between significant comic sales and adaptations, though there are some notable exceptions (“The Walking Dead” would be one).

As I noted, I primarily write about the top 750 because a) that’s all the data I was initially leaked back in 2003, b) it’s a “manageable” chunk of data, and c) “as above, so below” — the top 750 represents about half of sales. However, since 2007, I’ve received the “entire” database, which now gives us a solid eight years of data to track. We refer to this as “the Long Tail.” Here’s what the sales of all comics sales BookScan tracks in this category looks like — but, seriously, let me remind you that the dataset changes enough each year this is a fairly meaningless set of comparisons! Prior to 2013, this didn’t include Walmart. Please please please read “Some Notes Specific to 2015 Data!” above!

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

13,181

—–

15,386,549

—–

$183,066,142.30

—–

1167

$13,888.64

2008

17,571

24.98%

15,541,769

1.00%

$199,033,741.57

8.02%

885

$11,327.40

2009

19,692

12.07%

14,095,145

-9.31%

$189,033,736.31

-5.02%

599.52

$11,327.40

2010

21,993

11.68%

12,130,232

-9.31%

$172,435,244.86

-8.78%

552

$7,840.32

2011

23,945

8.88%

11,692,058

-3.61%

$175,634,490.77

1.86%

488

$7,334.91

2012

23,365

-2.42%

9,562,236

-18.22%

$164,415,366.07

-6.39

409

$7,036.82

2013

24,492

4.82%

10,153,628

6.18%

$176,419,370.45

7.30%

415

$7,325.63

2014

26,976

10.14%

11,820,324

16.41%

$207,598,355.60

17.67%

438

$7,695.56

2015

* 22,431

-16.85%

15,269,550

29.18%

$259,807,532.36

25.15%

681

$11,582.52

Despite the 2015 asterisk of losing nearly 17% of the books on the list due to how it was generated, it doesn’t seem to impact the bottom line as much — unit sales are still up by almost a third, with dollars up by a quarter. These are entirely fantastic results, across the board, and show growth at both the “bottom” as well as the top.

Let’s take a look at the Top 20 best-selling items on the 2015 chart; it looks like this:

352,791 — DORK DIARIES 10

296,415 — DORK DIARIES 9

263,932 — DRAMA

240,045 — SMILE

219,421 — SISTERS

116,683 — KRISTY’S GREAT IDEA: FULL-COLOR

115,424 — DORK DIARIES 1

89,774 — BIG NATE: SAY GOOD-BYE TO DORK

73,258 — EL DEAFO

69,913 — BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE HC

69,748 — JEDI ACADEMY

68,081 — THE TRUTH ABOUT STACEY: FULL-COLOR

66,898 — BIG NATE’S GREATEST HITS

66,442 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V3 TP

62,666 — BIG NATE: WELCOME TO MY WORLD

60,493 — THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM V1 TP

60,485 — BIG NATE: THE CROWD GOES WILD!

58,818 — HYPERBOLE AND A HALF

58,338 — PERSEPOLIS 1

58,261 — DORK DIARIES 9 TALES FRO B&N EDITION

There are quite a number of take-away’s from this year’s Top 20. First and foremost: fifteen of the twenty are comics aimed at children; and at the top of the chart, the numbers these books are selling is exploding.

Let’s start with Rachel Renee Russell’s “Dork Diaries,” which took places #1, #2, #7 and #20. “Dork Diaries” is only kind of vaguely “comics” to my eyes, but it is also not not-comics. In 2014 the best-selling volume that charted came in at 152K — in 2015 the new released volumes showed up with more than twice that number of copies — with 353K for vol. 10 and 355K for vol. 9 (#20 is a “Barnes & Noble Exclusive Cover” version of vol. 9 — this would seem to suggest that retailer exclusives don’t add that much in the book channel?).

Of course, the problem is we only get to find out how vol. 1, 9 and 10 sell. Vol. 2-8 are apparently not BISCED “comics”-first! One presumes that many of those also sold in the 100K range as well, in 2015. In fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that far more than a million and a half combined copies of “Dork Diaries” sold through BookScan reporters in 2015.

The next four places #3-6 on the Top 20 are owned by Raina Telgemeier, with “Drama” doing 264K (it sold just 94K in 2014), “Smile” at 240k (151K in 2014), “Sisters at 219K (it was the #1 book of 2014’s report… At 179K!) and vol. 1 of the newly colored “Baby Sitter’s Club” pulling down 116k. Raina also takes the #12 book with another “Baby Sitter’s Club” volume at 68K. That’s an astounding performance, and an absolutely incredible growth in sales year-over-year.

Where is this growth coming from? Is it coming from all quarters as more and more stores realize the strength of middle-school-age-oriented graphic novels, or is it coming from big players like WalMart going big on the category? Anecdotally, “Smile” and “Sisters” are both in my own store’s Top 100.

Raina has six books that chart altogether (though there are 27 entries in the full list, due to various editions and formats), and she sold 990k copies this year, for more than $11 million in sales — almost 6.5% of all the sales of the comics report for BookScan were by Raina Telgemeier (and almost 4.25% of the dollars!) That’s purely incredible (and just a little bit insane)

Coming in at #7, is Lincoln Peirce’s “Big Nate: Say Goodbye to Dork City,” his new release from March of 2015. Peirce is also in the chart at #13 for “Greatest Hits,” his new release from Jan of 2015, and at #15 for “Welcome to My World,” his new release from Sep 15. He also places at #16 for 2014’s “The Crowd Goes Wild.” He also has nine other books within the Top 750. That’s a lot of “Big Nate” books, and all aimed squarely at kids — almost $4.5 million dollars worth!

At #9, is Cece Bell’s “El Deafo” — that’s eight of the top 10 books by a woman creator.

The first super hero comic book (as well as first comic that’s aimed at adults, sort of oddly that they’re the same thing?) comes in at #10 with “Batman: The Killing Joke” at almost 70K sold. This, too, is an enormous jump from 2014 sales, where it only sold 32K copies

The first volume of Jeffrey Brown’s “Jedi Academy” semi-comics book comes in at #11, with almost 70K sold in the Year of Star Wars’ return — yet it is down from 83K in 2014.

Robert Kirkman makes the Top 20 with two Walking Dead Compendia — #14 for the newly released vol. 3 at 66K, then vol. 1 coming in at #16 with 60K. That’s down a little bit from 2014 when vol. 1 sold 68K.

Finally, the back of the Top 20 brings us Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” at #18 at 59K (it sold nearly 130K the previous year), and, at #19, Marjane Satrapi’s first volume of “Persepolis,” at just over 58K. Like most years, the second volume of “Persepolis” takes a deep fall (all the way down to, ew, 5K!), while the complete edition of the book sells about 28K.

Female dominance of the sales charts is getting stronger, as only eight of the Top Twenty are by a male.

What if you sort the chart by dollars grossed, instead? That changes the picture a little, but not as much as previous years — now even “The Walking Dead’s” $60 cover price can’t offset the power of Rachel Renee Russell’s “Dork Diaries,” although all three Compendia now place.

$4,935,546.09 — DORK DIARIES 10

$4,146,845.85 — DORK DIARIES 9

$3,985,855.58 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V3 TP

$3,628,975.07 — THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM V1 TP

$2,900,612.68 — DRAMA

$2,732,964.43 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V2 TP

$2,638,094.55 — SMILE

$2,411,436.79 — SISTERS

$1,614,781.76 — DORK DIARIES 1

$1,282,346.17 — KRISTY’S GREAT IDEA: FULL-COLOR

$1,257,734.87 — BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE HC

$1,233,792.00 — CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT? HC

1,175,771.82 — HYPERBOLE AND A HALF

$1,165,833.48 — CIVIL WAR TP

$1,163,843.10 — PERSEPOLIS 1

$906,026.52 — JEDI ACADEMY

$896,842.26 — BIG NATE: SAY GOOD-BYE TO DORK

$869,005.02 — BIG NATE’S GREATEST HITS

$815,071.39 — DORK DIARIES 9 TALES FRO B&N EDITION

$802,175.10 — EL DEAFO

Really, the biggest change here is that Roz Chast’s “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” places along with Marvel’s “Civil War,” now their best-selling title.

Fifteen books in the “million dollars or more” club, which is a new record for the chart.

How about if we sort it by author? Here are people with more than 10 books placing in the Top 750:

KIRKMAN ROBERT — 39

ISAYAMA HAJIME — 21

SNYDER SCOTT — 18

JOHNS GEOFF — 15

PEIRCE LINCOLN — 13

MASHIMA HIRO — 12

TOBOSO YANA — 11

KISHIMOTO MASASHI — 11

KAWAHARA REKI — 11

KIBUISHI KAZU — 10

This is a lot smaller list than previous years — only ten people who place more than ten books each, with Kirkman being the real winner here. Just over 2 million copies, total, of the Top 750 are by these ten authors, or a bit under 23% of the total sales volume — in 2014 it was nineteen authors, taking 35% of volume, so things are widening out nicely as the market rises.

Let’s add some dollar amounts, with these being all of the authors selling over $1M combined in books, according to BookScan. That looks like this:

KIRKMAN ROBERT — $17,023,197.97

RUSSELL RACHEL RENEE $11,122,490.41

TELGEMEIER RAINA — $10,970,503.74

PEIRCE LINCOLN — $4,416,675.33

SNYDER SCOTT — $4,395,252.34

ISAYAMA HAJIME — $3,141,093.04

MOORE ALAN — $2,939,866.66

VAUGHAN BRIAN K. — $2,864,944.27

KIBUISHI KAZU — $2,425,742.85

JOHNS GEOFF — $2,186,577.95

SATRAPI MARJANE — $1,962,652.35

MILLAR MARK — $1,584,858.96

GAIMAN NEIL — $1,565,773.85

BROWN JEFFREY — $1,538,340.75

KISHIMOTO MASASHI — $1,433,820.04

ISHIDA SUI — $1,425,210.84

MILLER FRANK — $1,383,524.40

YANG GENE LUEN — $1,309,806.41

SPIEGELMAN ART — $1,290,464.90

CHAST ROZ — $1,233,792.00

BROSH ALLIE — $1,175,771.82

MARVEL COMICS — $1,133,398.43

O’MALLEY BRYAN LEE — $1,128,915.31

LOEB JEPH — $1,092,562.80

KAWAHARA REKI — $1,077,240.00

STEVENSON NOELLE — $1,049,896.71

TOBOSO YANA — $1,042,626.00

This gives us 27 authors, who sell a combined $83.8M worth of books. That is just under one-third of all comics dollars being spent on BookScan (all 22,431 entries!) from the pens of just a small number of people.

What you can take from this is that only a small number of creators drive the majority of the business in comics (and books in general, I think); and conversely, this probably means that most comics aren’t actually significantly profitable any given year.

(The best one is “Marvel Comics” where the publisher is listed in the author field, sheesh)

Let’s switch our attention to looking how publishers performed.

As a way to make the publisher breakdowns more readable, I split the chart into “eastern” (Manga) and “western” comics, because I think there are a few clear market distinctions between those categories. So, without further ado:

2015 Manga

No real clear dominance of series in Manga in 2015 — sales are up for the second year in a row, but over a wider variety of titles than historically typical.

Here’s a year-to-year comparison chart for the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

447

3,361,966

$34,368,409

2004

518

4,603,558

$45,069,684

2005

594

5,691,425

$53,922,514

2006

575

6,705,624

$61,097,050

2007

575

6,837,355

$61,927,238

2008

514

5,624,101

$53,033,579

2009

451

4,414,705

$41,068,604

2010

436

3,117,019

$30,212,561

2011

392

2,627,570

$27,017,081

2012

367

1,908,186

$21,324,368

2013

315

1,665,487

$21,256,777

2014

271

1,748,185

$22,601,720

2015

*279

2,033,534

$26,191,474

Another up year for manga in America, though grow is slower than it is on the Western side. The top selling Manga in the US, via the BookScan reporters is “Tokyo Ghoul,” with just a bit over 50K in sales.

While 2014 was led by the dominance of “Attack on Titan” (where vol. 1 sold 58K), that pulls way back in 2015, with vol. 1 only selling a relatively meager 34K. All 17 volumes continue to chart in the Top 750 (along with nine other spin-off volumes), but the bottom of the sales (vol. 7) is under 10k. Collectively “AoT” sells 286K copies, which is a pretty big drop from 2014’s 394K sold.

The numbers for Manga as a category down into the “Long Tail” paint the picture.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

6231

—

11,323,487

—

$108,770,537

—

1817

$17,456.35

2008

7842

20.54%

10,173,091

-11.31%

$100,800,283

-7.91%

1297

$12,853.90

2009

8756

11.6%

8,148,490

-19.90%

$81,770,442

-18.78%

931

$9,338.79

2010

8764

6,239,725

-23.42%

$67,092,668

-17.95%

712

$7,655.48

2011

8991

2.59%

5,690,327

-8.80%

$62,810,728

-6.38%

633

$6,985.96

2012

6332

-29.57%

3,510,057

-38.32%

$40,943,613

-34.81%

554

$6,466.14

2013

7024

10.93%

3,516,208

0.01%

$44,651,823

9.06 %

501

$6,357.04

2014

7452

6.09%

3,914,385

11.32%

$51,557,925

15.47%

525

$6,918.67

2015

*4412

-40.79%

4,580,434

17.02%

$62,253,624

20.75%

1038

$14,110.07

Scrub out all of the OOP books from Tokyopop and Del Rey (and others), and the title count crashes, yet sales sure still hold their own. Again, this is lower growth than the “Western” side of things — but it is still sold and spectacular growth all things considered.

I count 89 distinct series among the 279 placing manga titles in the Top 750 — sales continue to widen rather than just being dominated by a small number of series, as in the past. Here is the Top 20 manga:

50,541 — TOKYO GHOUL V1 TP

34,107 — ATTACK ON TITAN 1

30,110 — TOKYO GHOUL, VOLUME 2

28,371 — ONE-PUNCH MAN, VOLUME 1

26,756 — THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST TP

23,807 — NARUTO, VOL. 72

23,730 — DEATH NOTE BLACK EDITION, VOL.

23,340 — NARUTO, VOL. 70

22,541 — FAIRY TAIL V01

20,437 — NARUTO, VOL. 71

20,125 — BLACK BUTLER, VOLUME 1

19,814 — TOKYO GHOUL, VOLUME 3

19,108 — ATTACK ON TITAN 2

18,667 — NARUTO, VOL. 69

18,633 — ATTACK ON TITAN 15

18,532 — ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM, VOL.

18,065 — ONE-PUNCH MAN, VOLUME 2

15,977 — BIG HERO 6, VOL. 1

15,898 — BLUE EXORCIST, VOLUME 1

15,822 — UNOFFICIAL HATSUNE MIX

These are solid results, though Manga is looking for it’s “Next Attack on Titan” or “Next Naruto,” both of which are seeing heavy declines — in 2008 in the newest volume of “Naruto” sold over 104K copies by itself.

Breaking down the manga portion of the chart by publisher, Viz takes 124 of the 279 manga spots in the Top 750, keeping them as the overwhelmingly dominant manga player with a bit under half of the placing titles. Within the Top 750, Viz charted about 978K pieces, for nearly $12 million — Viz continues to control the manga charts as they have for a very long time now, and it is a bit hard of envisioning anyone really challenging them much for that role.

Viz has one book (vol. 1 of “Tokyo Ghoul”) that does over 50K in sales in 2015, another seven that do over 20K, and fourteen more that do over 10K.

In second place among manga publishers, we have Kodansha Comics, which weakens a little this year and places 61 titles within the top 750, with 493K in sales, and $6.1 million dollars (compared to 574K and $7.2m in 2014).

Kodansha’s licenses formerly were both the original backbone of Tokyopop, as well as being the majority of Del Rey Manga. Kodansha pulled Tokyopop’s license in March of ’09 and Del Rey in October of ’10. You may want to look at those publisher’s listings below to get a better historical overview.

Kodansha’s current best-seller is “Attack on Titan,” but, as noted above, the bloom is off the rose a bit there — vol. 1 just pulls in 34K, while vol. 2 drops below 20k. The next best-seller is “Fairy Tail” at nearly 23K.

These Long Tail figures are just for Kodansha-published titles, and they reflect that Kodansha, itself, first started publishing in 2010:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2010

9

—-%

13,291

—-%

$322,717

—-%

1477

$35,857.44

2011

108

1200.00%

197,021

1482.36%

$2,537,221

786.21%

1825

$23,492.79

2012

246

127.78%

324,827

64.87%

$4,026,770

58.71%

1320

$16,368.98

2013

320

30.08%

501,554

54.41%

$6,299,487

56.44%

1567

$19,685.90

2014

442

38.13%

821,298

63.75%

$10,481,008

66.38%

1858

$23,712.69

2015

455

2.94%

855,347

4.15%

$10,938,531

4.37%

1880

$24,040.73

That’s pretty weak growth, and well under the market as a whole.

In 2015 Kodansha has just two titles over 20K, and 19 more over 10K.

The #3 manga publisher is now Yen Press, which places 68 titles in the Top 750, with about 407K copies sold, and nearly $5.8 million retail gross — they’re within striking distance of Kodansha. Yen is a division of Hachette (more on them later).

Here’s the Long Tail for Yen, reversing their prior sales drops, and showing their biggest sales to date.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

10

—

12,896

—

$147,449

—

1290

$14,744.90

2008

90

800.00%

110,126

753.95%

$1,237,860

739.52%

1,224

$13,754.00

2009

211

134.44%

330,962

200.53%

$3,697,113

198.67%

1,569

$17,521.86

2010

344

63.03%

560,983

69.50%

$6,650,871

79.89%

1,680

$19,333.93

2012

548

19.13%

647,948

-15.20%

$8,735,264

-12.24%

1,182

$15,940.26

2013

654

19.34%

692,380

6.86%

$9,715,421

11.22%

1,059

$14,855.38

2014

776

18.65%

682,135

-1.48%

$9,985,502

2.78%

776

$12,867.92

2015

649

-16.37%

917,620

34.52%

$13,248,445

32.68%

1414

$20,413.63

Their best-selling title is vol. 1 of “Black Butler” at just over 20K sold, followed by “Big Hero 6” at just under 16K. They have one title over 20K, and six more over 10K.

The fourth largest publisher of manga in 2014, on the Top 750 of BookScan is Seven Seas, which places 18 titles, for 110K and $1.4 million in sales. This is a solid rise on last year’s 67K and $886K.

Seven Seas’ Long Tail looks like this, another solid year for them.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

54

—

50,641

—

$558,450

—

938

$10,341.67

2008

76

41.74%

80,112

58.20%

$833,667

49.28%

1,054

$10,969.30

2009

97

27.63%

74,967

-6.42%

$807,666

-3.12%

773

$8,326,45

2010

93

-4.12%

75,764

1.06%

$875,612

8.41%

815

$9,415.18

2011

118

26.88%

116,360

53.58%

$1,426,618

62.93%

986

$12,089.98

2012

151

27.97%%

124,262

6.79%

$1,684,994

18.11%

823

$11,158.90

2013

223

47.68%

204,419

64.51%

$2,942,608

74.64%

917

$13,195.55

2014

300

34.53%

284,484

39.17%

$3,979,338

35.23%

948

$13,264.46

2015

*304

1.34%

374,715

31.72%

$5,177,568

30.11%

1233

$17,031.47

Their best-selling title is “Monster Musume” vol. 6, which sells just over 11K copies. It is their sole book over 10K.

Eastern Publisher #5 will be Dark Horse, surging forward a slot, with four titles placing in the Top 750, for 28K copies sold and $500K in dollar sales.

Looking at the Long Tail, this is what Dark Horse’s (manga only!) recent performance looks like — they finally reverse years of drops, to steady the ship greatly.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

341

—

249,943

—

$3,329,464

—

733

$14,744.90

2008

420

23.17%

248,981

-0.38%

$3,176,870

-4.58%

593

$7,563.98

2009

455

8.33%

226,497

-9.03%

$2,915,693

-8.22%

498

$6,408.12

2010

473

3.96%

194,494

-14.13%

$2,633,077

-9.69%

411

$5,566.76

2011

497

5.07%

189,329

-2.66%

$2,602,230

-1.17%

381

$5,235.86

2012

493

-0.80%

112,373

-40.65%

$1,631,038

-37.32%

228

$3,308.39

2013

521

5.68%

103,538

-7.86%

$1,678,563

2.91%

199

$3,221.81

2014

559

7.29%

100,894

-2.60%

$1,617,251

-3.65%

180

$2,893.11

2015

*303

-45.80%

135,444

34.24%

$2,238,167

38.39%

447

$7,386.69

Dark Horse Manga only has the one title over 10k.

There’s more about Dark Horse down below in the “Western” section.

Dropping down to sixth largest publisher of manga, as measured by the BookScan Top 750, is Vertical. They place just four books into the Top 750, 17K copies, for $354K — that’s also a rise from the previous year.

The Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

25

—

23,444

—

$417,914

—

938

$16,716.56

2008

34

36.00%

21,003

-10.41%

$343,109

-8.21%

617

$10,091.44

2009

39

14.71%

19,434

-7.47%

$325,437

-5.15%

498

$8,344.54

2010

62

58.97%

33,097

70.30%

$494,098

51.83%

534

$7,969.32

2011

84

35.48%

49,062

48.24%

$699,253

41.52%

584

$8,324.44

2012

118

40.48%

45,026

-8.23%

$671,086

-4.03%

382

$5,687.17

2013

159

34.75%

61,906

37.49%

$1,128,252

68.12%

389

$7,095.92

2014

187

17.61%

83,312

34.58%

$1,491,984

32.24%

446

$7,978.53

2015

*162

-13.37%

110,172

32.24%

$1,956,167

31.11%

680

$12,075.10

Their best-selling title is “Ajin” vol. 1 with 5095 copies sold.

2015 Western Publishers

When I say “Western” here, I mean publishers/work from Europe and America, as opposed to Asia, not publishers of the genre!

I’d like to continue to remind you that in 2008 there was some sort of behind-the-scenes recategorization in what got sent to me — I now know this is probably a change in BISAC codes! — and most of the “cartoon-strip humor” books like “Calvin & Hobbes” and “The Far Side” suddenly disappeared, so there’s kind of a not-strictly apples thing going on with the pre-2008 numbers here. Do keep that in mind when making comparisons both in the Top 750 chart, as well as the Long Tail.

Naturally, BookScan can’t seem to keep some sort of internally-consistent method of categorizing titles that doesn’t seem to change in some fashion from year-to-year — there was an influx of “strip” comics last year, and a few more this year too. It is a limitation of how publishers assign BISACs and in what order.

Here comes some exceptional year-over-year growth in the Top 750!

Year

# of Placing Titles

Unit Sales

Dollar Sales

2003

304

2,133,618

$32,360,644

2004

233

1,467,535

$22,713,802

2005

142

1,315,920

$21,537,155

2006

174

1,689,571

$29,314,852

2007

175

1,746,962

$33,247,187

2008

236

2,710,175

$48,327,594

2009

299

3,219,748

$52,147,410

2010

314

3,297,317

$54,515,605

2011

358

3,068,593

$77,254,870

2012

383

3,530,143

$68,593,986

2013

435

3,988,864

$74,805,932

2014

479

4,910,846

$90,166,989

2015

*471

6,729,449

$115,035,044

Record breaking figures.

Let’s take a look at the Long Tail for Western publishers collectively:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Pieces

% Change

Total Dollars

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

3,029,039

—

74,595,605

—

$558,450

—

436

$10,733.18

2008

9728

39.97%

5,368,678

77.24%

$98,233,459

31.69%

552

$10,098.01

2009

10,936

12.30%

5,946,595

10.76%

$107,263,294

9.19%

544

$9,808.27

2010

13,229

20.97%

5,890,507

-0.01%

$105,342,577

-0.02%

445

$7,963.00

2012

17,031

13.89%

6,052,179

0.84%

$123,471,753

9.44%

355

$7,249.82

2013

17,468

2.57%

6,637,420

9.67%

$131,767,547

6.72%

380

$7,543.37

2014

19,524

11.77%

7,905,939

19.11%

$156,040,431

18.21%

405

$7,992.24

2015

*18,019

-7.71%

10,689,116

34.44%

$197,553,909

26.60%

593

$10,963.64

Again, this is a great collective performance, compared to the overall state of print books in 2015.

Next, we’ll survey each of the publishers, and their best-selling titles, ranking them by the number of pieces they sold this year.

Since we’re tracking by the number of copies sold, 2015 brings us a large upset with the #1 Western publisher in the Top 750 now being Scholastic. Scholastic has several imprints — besides the Graphix imprint, they also publish Arthur A. Levine and Blue Sky, and together, they place 31 titles in 2015 for almost 1.4 million copies, and $16.4 million in sales.

(Though, note that this is exclusively through BookScan reporters — there is a working assumption that whatever retail bookstore sales we’re seeing here are just a tiny fraction of their overall sales — between Book Fairs, school sales, Library sales and such, Scholastic might be racking up much more impressive numbers, but I can only analyze what data I actually have!)

Not only does Scholastic take this position with a relatively low number of placing titles (just over a quarter of our #2 publisher), but this is the first time that a primarily kids-focused publisher has taken over the #1 spot. Things are, as they say, changing.

In alphabetical order by imprint:

Arthur A. Levine places just one book into the Top 750: just over 10K copies of “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan.

Blue Sky is also just one book in the Top 750 — Dav Pilkey’s “Ook & Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen,” comes in just a notch under 8500 copies sold.

The Graphix imprint has 23 placing titles, for just over 1.2 million in sales, and a bit under $14 million in dollars, nearly doubling last year. Obviously, Graphix’s big hits are the Raina Telgemeier books (“Sisters,” “Smile,” “Drama,” and the “Baby0Sitter’s Club” adaptations), all of which are discussed up top.

Graphix also does extremely well with Jennifer Holm’s “Sunny Side Up,” which scores almost 29K copies sold in 2015. Kazu Kibuishi’s “Amulet,” continues to soar, with all six volumes and a box set of vol. 1-3 charting, with vol. 1 seling an incredible 24K copies. Jeff Smith’s “Bone” slips a bit, with only six of the nine volumes appearing in the Top 750 this year. Vol. 1, “Out From Boneville,” sells a bit over 15K copies this year.

Scholastic also publishes (without an imprint) the “Star Wars Jedi Academy” books by Jeffrey Brown which pulled down 79K and 49K for vol. 1 and vol. 2 this year. They also sell over 12K copies of “Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.”

The Long Tail for Scholastic looks like this — really an astonishingly great growth this year:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

28

—

203,900

—

$2,018,694

—

7282

$72,096.21

2008

39

39.29%

346,134

69.76%

$3,498,012

73.28%

8875

$89,692.62

2009

52

33.33%

432,070

24.83%

$4,654,686

33.07%

8309

$89,513.19

2010

60

15.38%

361,086

-16.43%

$4,084,718

-12.25%

6018

$68,078.63

2011

72

20.00%

419,010

16.04%

$4,708,860

15.28%

5819

$65,400.83

2012

76

5.56%

325,088

-22.42%

$3,955,249

-16.00%

4277

$52,042.75

2013

91

19.74%

437,590

34.61%

$5,365,921

35.67%

4809

$58,966.16

2014

97

6.59%

846,277

93.39%

$10,204,175

90.17%

8725

$105,197.68

2015

*140

44.33%

1,449,296

71.26%

$17,170,714

68.27%

10,352

$122,647.96

The last three years of growth for Scholastic has been nothing short of meteoric.

Scholastic has three books over 200K, another over 100K, three more over 50K, six more over 20K, and another four over 10K. Great year for them.

In 2015, it is an upset for DC Entertainment as they drop into the #2 position as the best-selling Western publisher in the Top 750.

In 2015 they placed 119 titles in the Top 750, for 1.07 million units, and just over $21.7 million in retail dollars, from their two charting imprints. “DC” itself is 100 of those placements, while Vertigo represents 19.

Here’s a year-to-year comparison chart of the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

74

336,569

$6,151,258

2004

39

179,440

$3,135,983

2005

42

298,484

$5,440,001

2006

59

551,160

$10,246,082

2007

58

487,467

$9,953,976

2008

71

1,015,864

$19,805,098

2009

93

1,223,733

$24,061,834

2010

96

648,403

$12,523,128

2011

107

660,706

$13,083,378

2012

104

688,870

$14,811,979

2013

130

767,686

$15,620,981

2014

131

931,239

$19,207,755

2015

119

1,074,304

$21,701,088

DC has yet another banner year during 2015 in the book stores, according to the BookScan reporters — coming within striking distance of “best year ever.” They still have a little way to go until they top that ’09 performance (mostly driven by the incredible comics success of “Watchmen,” which was driven by the film).

As noted toward the top of the report, DC’s highest placing book is “Batman: The Killing Joke,” which sold almost 70K copies, and was the tenth-best-selling comic overall for the BookScan reporters. It’s probably no real surprise that Batman continues to be DC’s most lucrative property, with 54 of their 100 placing titles being Batman or Batman-related (“Nightwing,” “Batgirl,” et al), totaling over 562K copies sold, larger than many publishers just with a single family. Those 55 titles are split with some 32 of them being “New 52”-era stories, and 23 of them being “classic” stories.

For that matter, the “New 52” branding seems solid enough in book stores — 55 of the one hundred DC Universe titles are “New 52”-driven titles.

Other notable “Batman” related books include Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight Returns” at #3 (34K), “Court of Owls” at #5 (26K), “Year One” at #6 (25K), “City of Owls” at #7 (24K), and “Hush” at #10 (21K). I especially find the tight spread on Snyder & Capullo’s first two volumes to be especially strong — usually there’s a big drop between first and second volumes. Frank Miller’s sequel to “DKR,” “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” manages to make the Top 750 with a comparatively weak 5690 sold.

DC’s #2 title in 2015 is “Watchmen,” coming in at over 34K in paperback, and another 5013 copies in hardcover (the older edition of the paperback shows up in the bottom of the chart with an additional 248 copies sold). Despite that, the “Before Watchmen” prequels do pretty poorly, with none showing up in the BookScan Top 750, and the best-selling of them (“Comedian/Rorschach”) just selling a bare 2613 copies, and the worst-selling (“Ozymandius/Crimson Corsair”), doing a bare 1021.

Other significant DC sales are “Sandman: Overture” coming in as their fourth best-seller with 28K sold, despite only being on sale for a single month in 2015 (and compared to 18.5K sold of “Preludes & Nocturnes” for the entire year); “Suicide Squad” as their eighth best-seller, in advance of the upcoming film, with 23K (vol. 2 drops to just a hair over 10K); and “V For Vendetta” being their ninth-best-selling title with 22K.

DC also has a number of television projects in 2015 — I think it is fairly easy to ascribe the just-under 20K copies of the first “New 52” volume of “The Flash” (it was just 13K in 2014), and the seven other flash-related titles as being driven by the success of the show. Ditto with the 7304 copies of “Hellblazer: Original Sins” is probably connected to the “Constantine” television show (though it sold more than 9K in 2014), although there’s only a single “Green Arrow” book charting (5K of “Year One”) — and not a single “Supergirl” book in the Top 750 (not that they have anything substantial in print — vol. 1 of the “New 52” run limps-in downchart with under 3200 copies sold) nor any clear bump from the “Gotham” television show (as procedurals like Brubaker and Rucka’s “Gotham Central” aren’t actually available from DC in 2015).

Here’s DC’s Long Tail; despite all of the missing (OOP) books as discussed toward the top of the column, DC still scores 21% better sales in 2015.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

1644

—

1,181,218

—

$22,033,212

—

719

$13,402

2008

2057

25.12%

1,719,330

45.56%

$33,609,704

52.54%

836

$16,339

2009

2264

10.06%

1,902,181

10.64%

$37,816,864

12.52%

840

$16,704

2010

2442

7.86%

1,320,262

-30.59%

$25,982,910

-31.29%

541

$10,640

2011

2423

-0.07%

1,323,630

0.26%

$27,130,811

4.42%

546

$11,197

2012

2452

1.20%

1,206,198

-8.87%

$26,729,997

-1.48%

492

$10,901

2013

2551

4.04%

1,369,850

13.57%

$29,881,153

11.79%

537

$11,714

2014

2746

7.64%

1,638,901

19.64%

$35,388,570

18.43%

597

$12,887

2015

*1690

-38.46%

1,997,577

21.89%

$43,031,546

21.60%

1182

$25,462

DC has one book over 50K, nine more over 20K, and fifteen more that come in over 10K.

Our #3 Western Publisher in the Top 750 is Simon & Schuster, who is also the first of the mainstream book publishing so-called “Big Five.” They take this position with just seven placing titles, which total just under 900K in units and $13.2 million at retail.

Five of these books are from their Aladdin imprint, while one each are from Margaret K. Elderberry and Touchstone.

From Aladdin comes Rachel Renee Russell’s immensely successful “Dork Diaries,” with the best-selling (“Tales From A Not So Fabulous Pet Sitter”) selling 353K copies by itself. As noted toward the top, if all of the “Dork Diaries” books were in the database given to me, this would almost certainly change the charts a lot.

Touchstone books has just one title: Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” which sells almost 59K copies, down quite a bit from 130K in 2014.

The Margaret K. Elderberry imprint also has one book — Emily Carroll’s “Through The Woods,” which sells nearly 8K copies, compared to 5K in 2014.

Here is Simon & Schuster’s Long Tail, which includes the imprints that I’m aware of (Aladdin and Simon-named ones, as well as Atria, Atheneum, Gallery, Margaret K. Elderberry, Pocket and Touchstone):

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

12

—

8,317

—

$158,014

—

693

$13,167.83

2008

26

116.67%

14,917

79.36%

$211,798

34.04%

574

$8,146.08

2009

41

57.69%

109,558

634.45%

$1,430,544

575.43%

2,672

$34,891.32

2010

46

12.20%

214,828

96.09%

$2,660,094

85.95%

4,670

$57,828.13

2011

62

34.78%

187,531

-12.71%

$2,383,491

-10.40%

3025

$38,443.40

2012

63

1.61%

165,831

-11.57%

$2,844,453

19.34%

2632

$45,150.05

2013

67

6.35%

258,931

56.14%

$4,165,350

46.44%

3865

$62,169.40

2014

71

5.97%

383,878

48.25%

26.55%

5,407

$91,842.54

2015

*75

5.63%

910,341

237.14%

205.29%

12,138

$178,486.15

Simon & Schuster has one book over 300K, one over 200K, another over 100K, and two more over 50K.

Image Comics, our #4 largest Western publisher via the BookScan reporters, has 71 titles placing within the Top 750, selling 878K copies and $22.6 million.

This is what Image’s performance has looked like, in the Top 750, over the last decade:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

1

2,328

$30,148

2004

1

402

$5,206

2005

3

8,699

$100,236

2006

1

5,311

$113,465

2007

4

28,349

$344,026

2008

9

55,033

$830,574

2009

11

78,874

$1,210,094

2010

22

289,044

$6,479,930

2011

27

367,265

$8,670,917

2012

33

701,050

$20,389,762

2013

38

651,390

$19,371,269

2014

47

691,804

$17,554,492

2015

71

878,262

$22,587,672

That’s a terrific level of growth for Image, and they hit their best year ever in the Top 750, and that’s with a general softening of “The Walking Dead!”

Now “TWD” is still a great big money-maker — adding the third Compendium (48 issues for $60) really helps that bottom line — but the first “TWD” Compendia went from 68K in 2014 (and a crazy 96K in 2013) to “just” 60K in 2015 Further, new releases in the six-issue reprint series are slowing as well — in 2014, the high point was vol. 20 did over 45K, while in 2015, the high point (vol. 23) did just over 34K.

With that said, “TWD” is still a chart-monster, with all 12 hardcovers (vol. 11 sells almost 15K), and all 25 regular softcovers charting alongside the three Compendia. “TWD” has a massive 38 spaces among the Top 750, or a full five percent of listings! Vol. 1 of the regular softcover of “TWD” reports in with another 27K sold in 2015.

Image’s best-selling book in 2015 was “TWD” Compendium vol. 3 with 66K (and an additional 10K in a B&N “exclusive” cover down the charts), and vol. 1 & vol. 2 come in as #2 & #3.

After those three heavy-hitters, the spotlight changes over to Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ “Saga” with vol. 4 bringing in 41K copies, vol. 5 38K, and vol. 1 at 34K — the best-selling “Saga” in 2014 did just 38K, so this looks like a nicely growing franchise in the book market. All five softcovers place, as does just over 10K copies of the first hardcover.

“TWD” and “Saga” trade placements after that, all through Image’s top 12, but the first volumes of four more series manage to break into Image’s Top 20: Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s “The Wicked & The Divine” at #13 (16K), Scott Snyder & Jock’s “Wytches” at #16 (15K), Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky’s “Sex Criminals” at #18 (13K), and Kurtis Wiebe & Roc Upchurch’s “Rat Queens” at #20 (12.5K).

Here’s what Image’s Long Tail looks like; everything is right on track.:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

438

—

116,015

—

$2,313,477

—

265

$5,281.91

2008

515

17.58%

121,001

43.09%

$2,445,765

5.72%

235

$4,749.06

2009

571

10.87%

156,466

29.31%

$3,207,033

31.13%

274

$5,616.52

2010

642

12.43%

359,238

229.59%

$8,152,806

254.22%

560

$12,699.07

2011

749

16.66%

466,637

29.90%

$11,041,187

35.43%

623

$14,741.24

2012

868

15.89%

794,419

70.24%

$22,797,279

106.47%

915

$26,264.15

2013

14.52

994%

776,507

-2.25%

$22,085,860

-3.12%

781

$22,219.18

2014

1006

1.21%

830,735

6.98%

$20,309,973

-8.04%

826

$20,188.84

2015

*842

-16.30%

1,070,299

28.84%

$26,175,438

28.88%

1271

$31,087.22

Image has two titles over 50K, ten more over 20K, and another fourteen over 10K.

The #5 Western publisher within the Top 750 in 2015 is Marvel Comics, which places 63 titles for about 478K copies and $10.6 million sold.

Here is how Marvel looks in the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

73

455,553

$8,428,962

2004

50

227,985

$3,756,764

2005

26

153,317

$2,459,027

2006

33

294,852

$5,702,307

2007

37

376,918

$7,599,057

2008

38

303,639

$6,446,359

2009

34

226,541

$5,019,216

2010

33

206,273

$4,979,323

2011

27

128,364

$3,303,496

2012

32

141,145

$3,872,683

2013

39

187,598

$4,229,242

2014

53

342,706

$8,341,787

2015

*63

478,076

$10,611,981

It is another big year of growth for Marvel, as they have their best year in BookScan since we’ve been tracking.

Having said that, “Marvel” is practically synonymous with “comics” itself amongst “civilians” — and they had three movies with their brand in theaters in 2015 (“Ant-Man,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “Fantastic Four” — and their Icon imprint handles the comic book of “The Secret Service” from which the “Kingsman” movie was made) as well as two television shows (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Agent Carter”) so from that point of view, selling about half of the books that Image does in the Top 750 hardly seems like a triumph. Further, Marvel absolutely dominates periodical releases, which absolutely should translate into best-selling collections as well. For all of their amazing advantages, Marvel, I continue to believe, radically lags behind in book sales in any meaningful relative fashion.

But having said that, Marvel’s growth is real and solid, and goes in some interesting directions. Marvel’s #1 book in 2015 is “Civil War,” and they shift almost 47K copies in advance of the third Captain America movie having a similar title and story (we think) — this is more than triple the 15K copies it sold in 2014, as well as being twice the number of copies that they sold of last year’s #1 title, the first volume of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Coming in at #2 is the first volume of “Ms. Marvel,” which sells almost 27K copies. That’s a great, and just a tiny bit surprising (and a great improvement over the 10.7K copies it sold the previous year!) — no movie, no toys, just pure comics driving that amazing success. Vol. 2 of the series comes in at #7, with 15.7K sold, while vol. 3 comes in at #10 and 10.7K sold, and vol. 4 even squeaks in with 4K sold just in December, so this looks like really sustainable sales in a very real way.

At #3-5 for Marvel begins the (we assume) bookstore juggernaut for “Star Wars” — remember that these only really get a month or two of sales in the calendar year of 2015, so next year they should be even larger as these should be pretty perennial sellers. “Journey to Force Awakens” does ever-so slightly better than vol. 1 of the continuing series (by just 43 copies on around 16.8K of sales!), and the first “Darth Vader” isn’t much behind at 15.7K sold. A little farther down “Princess Leia” does somewhat disappointingly with just 7.3K copies sold, while “Kanan: The Last Padawan” sells a hair under 7K, and Marvel’s first repackaging of Dark Horse-published material moves about 3700 copies.

The rest of Marvel’s top 10 is filled out with the Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim “Infinity Gauntlet” with 13.8K sold as well as two volumes of “Deadpool” (“..Kills the Marvel Universe” takes the lead with 15.6K sold, while the $35 “…by Daniel Way” vol. 1 takes #2 with almost exactly 13K copies sold). There are 18 more “Deadpool” volumes throughout the rest of Marvel’s Top 750 places — nearly a third of the total! None sell even 10K copies though, which might be a direct result of the sheer number of in-print “Deadpool” books, and the lack of any clear roadmap of what to read and when and how.

What else? Hm, all four of Matt Fraction’s “Hawkeye” continue to chart, with v1 selling about 8.4K. The first volume of “Jessica Jones” comes in modestly at almost 7.3K copies sold, showing very little bounce from the extremely well-reviewed television show. Heck, the first volume of “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” sells just sixteen copies fewer then “Jessica Jones.” And that lack of “TV bounce” seems to follow through for “Daredevil,” as the character’s best-selling (“The Man Without Fear” by Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.) barely scrapes past 6K sold. For that matter, with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” acting as a $100m commercial, the “Age of Ultron” collection barely sells past 7K, and the best-selling “Ant-Man” volume moves barely 3K, not even placing in the Top 750 for the year. And you don’t even want to know how badly “Fantastic Four” or “S.H.I.E.L.D.” comics sell (about 500 copies on the higher ones). Even “The Secret Service” doesn’t make the Top 750, with barely 3400 copies sold.

Here is Marvel’s Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

1230

—

1,034,023

—

$19,947,737

—

841

$16,218

2008

1559

26.75%

1,032,394

-0.001%

$20,128,825

0.01%

662

$12,911

2009

2067

32.58%

954,335

-7.56%

$19,608,696

-2.58%

462

$9,487

2010

2551

23.42%

870,597

-8.77%

$19,485,662

-0.06%

352

$7,638

2011

2852

11.80%

852,187

-2.11%

$20,225,728

-3.80%

299

$7,092

2012

3083

8.10%

726,542

-14.74%

$18,848,013

-6.81%

236

$6,114

2013

3203

3.89%

730,826

0.59%

$17,820,299

-5.45%

228

$5,564

2014

3352

4.65%

918,595

25.69%

$24,369,961

36.75%

274

$7,270

2015

*1882

-43.85%

1,114,414

21.32%

$28,021,290

14.98%

592

$14,889

Marvel has two books over 20K, and another eight books that are over 10K.

The #6 publisher goes to Andrews McMeel. Andrews is a publisher that sometimes frustrates me by how they’ve been represented by BookScan — as I noted, it used to be that “humor” books like “Far Side” and “Calvin & Hobbes” used to rule the BookScan charts. Until, one day, poof! All of those books disappeared entirely from the dataset I was given, throwing off a whole lot of my comparables. And, for the most part, comic strip reprints have stayed out of these charts for half a decade. But, they’ve started creeping back into the listings for the last two years. I’m actually fine with comic strips and comic books co-existing in the same places — at least they’re both comics — but the inconsistency just drives me nucking futz.

Ultimately, I have 19 Andrews-published titles in the Top 750 in 2015, for 445K copies and $4.9 million in sales, but clearly that number would scale up significantly if it listed all of the strip collections they publish.

Most of the real action, however, for Andrews on the Top 750, is from Lincoln Peirce’s “Big Nate” books — ten of them chart this year, selling almost 90K at the high end (“Say Good-Bye to Dork Island”), with another three selling over 60K, and four more selling between 16 and 20K. Altogether the “Big Nate” books sell about 372K copies, for over $3.9 million.

Other than that, Andrews’ other big books are “The Oatmeal’s The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run” which does nearly 16K copies sold. While there are also two volumes of the “Phoebe and Her Unicorn” books, one selling 14K, the other moving 11K.

Andrews McMeel’s Long Tail chart is just about the most useless one of all because they publish a whole lot of comics (humor strips, like “Calvin & Hobbes”) that I no longer see in the data that gets leaked to me — almost certainly they’re doing several times better than this chart would suggest because of those books. Further, things appear and disappear in a way I’ve never been able to make sense of. Most of my comparatives are terrible and counterproductive here, and I really apologize for the weakness of my data in this specific instance.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

22

—

29,835

—

$461,238

—

1,356

$20,965.36

2008

20

-9.09%

25,115

-15.82%

$388,965

-15.67%

1,256

$19,448.25

2009

21

5.00%

26,205

4.34%

$401,982

3.35%

1,248

$19,142.00

2010

19

-9.52%

47,181

80.05%

$544,852

35.54%

2,483

$28,676.42

2011

17

-10.53%

116,850

147.66%

$1,222,171

124.31%

6,874

$71,892.41

2012

31

82.53%

225,546

93.02%

$2,737,935

124.02%

7,276

$88,320.48

2013

43

38.71%

343,681

52.38%

$3,747,799

36.88%

7,993

$87,158.12

2014

59

37.21%

373,713

8.74%

$4,387,252

17.06%

6,334

$74,360.21

2015

*76

28.81%

502,061

34.34%

$5,950,368

35.63%

6,606

$78,294.32

Andrews McMeel has four books over 50k, and seven others over 10k.

In 2013 there was a significant merger between Random House and Penguin Putnam, making the once so-called “Big Six” of mainstream book publishing now just the “Big Five.” The resulting publisher is known as Penguin Random House and was formally born on July 1, 2013. This entity is the #7 largest publisher of Western comics in 2015, via the BookScan reporters.

The “Big Five” publishers usually have a lot of multiple imprints, and I’m never 100% sure that I’ve properly identified each and every one of them. I do a lot of Googling to try and figure this stuff out!

The new Penguin Random House, as best as I can tell, has eleven distinct imprints that sell comics in some fashion that appear in the Top 750 list — Alfred A. Knopf, Ballantine, Bantam, Broadway, Del Rey, Dial, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Pantheon, Random House, Ten Speed, and Viking.

Combined, Penguin Random House imprints in the Top 750 in 2015 place 30 titles, for a bit over 338K units, and nearly $6.2 million in dollar sales. Looking at those imprints in alphabetical order:

Alfred A. Knopf Books For Younger Readers places four books into the Top 750, all from Jarrett J. Krosocza’s “Lunch Lady” series. Aimed squarely at, as the imprint’s name implies, younger readers, the best-seller of the seven is “Lunch Lady & The Cyborg Substitute” with sales just over 10K. The four volumes combined are about 22K copies, and $149K in retail dollars.

Ballantine places just one title in the Top 750: Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Seconds,” which sells 14.8K copies in its second year of release.

Bantam co-produces (with Dynamite) the comics adaptations of George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones.” The first two place, with vol. 1 selling 4366 copies.

Broadway Books has just one placing title this year: Max Brooks’ “Harlem Hellfighters” that sells 4223 copies.

Del Rey hits the Top 750 with two books this year — both well under 5K copies — Doug Wenzel’s adaptation of “The Hobbit” and Diana Gabaldon’s “Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel.”

Dial places a single title — the YA focused “Roller Girl” by Victoria Jamieson which racks up over an impressive 31k sold.

G.P. Putnam’s Sons has a single book: a comic adaptation of Marie Lu’s “Legend” with 3847 sold.

Pantheon is their “literary” comics wing, and has some of PRH’s best-sellers. There are ten different Pantheon books within the Top 750, the best-selling being Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis,” and art spiegelman’s “Maus.” “Persepolis” is discussed above, as it makes the entire Top 20 of the list, with 58K copies of vol. 1, while “Maus” vol. 1 sells 36K in its 29th year in print. As usual, that drops to 16K for vol. 2, while the complete edition sells 14.5K. Richard Maguire’s “Here” racks up 10.8K in sales this year, while the debut of “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage” does decently at 8623 sold.

Random House Books For Younger Readers is mostly the domain of Jennifer L. Holm and her multiple series: “Babymouse” (of which “Queen of the World” is the best-seller, at an impressive 17K copies sold), as well as “Super Amoeba,” but Judd Winick cracks the Holm club with the first volume of “Hilo” which notches sales of just over 6K.

Ten Speed Press brings us a single tile: “The Comics Story of Beer,” which sells 7.6K.

And finally, Viking makes the list with “The Last Kids on Earth,” a juvie-“Walking Dead”-style book, at just under 7.5K, whew.

Here’s what the Long-Tail for the merged company looked like in 2015:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2013

282

—

447,174

—

$7,259,364

—

1,586

$25,742.43

2014

252

-10.64%

428,634

-4.15%

$7,415,712

2.15%

1,701

$29,427.43

2015

*450

78.57%

513,611

19.83%

$8,517,761

14.49%

1,141

$18,928.36

However, I’m not willing to pull an “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia” moment, so let’s look at the individual pieces of the past. This is what Penguin Putnam (Ace, Berkley Books, Dial, Dutton, Gotham Books, Grossett & Dunlap, Hudson Street, InkLit, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel, Plume, Price Stern Sloan, Puffin, Putnam, Razorbill, Riverhead and Viking) used to look like alone).

Penguin Random House has one title over 50K, three books over 20K, and another six books over 10K.

The #8 largest publisher with Western comics in BookScan 2015 is another of the “big five”: HarperCollins. Harper has twelve books in the Top 750 this year, summing up to 120K copies sold, for $1.8 million. There’s a lot of imprints with the word “Harper” in the title in the Long Tail (Harper, Harper Paperbacks, Harper Teen, Harper Festival, Harper Teen, and so on), and Harper is also IT books, William Morrow, and Zondervan.

Harper’s biggest hit is Noelle Stevenson’s “Nimona,” which racks up an impressive 32K sold (as well as nearly 10k more in hardcover), while they also have two “Big Nate” volumes (which, yes, is published by two different publishing houses) — “Triple Play” sells 16.5K, while “Genius Mode” sells 13.6K copies. The perennial “Understanding Comics” shifts over 13.5K copies.

Their other imprints don’t show in the Top 750.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

18

—

36,940

—

$600,540

—

2052

$33,363.33

2008

36

100.00%

48,264

30.66%

$863,808

43.84%

1341

$23,994.67

2009

42

16.67%

81,774

69.43%

$1,308,891

15.53%

1947

$31,164.07

2010

41

-2.38%

64,429

-21.21%

$719,328

-45.04%

1571

$17,544.59

2011

50

21.95%

75,394

17.02%

$1,083,609

50.64%

1508

$21,672.18

2012

80

60.00%

159,573

111.65%

$2,113,744

95.07%

1995

$26,421.80

2013

68

-15.00%

197,595

23.83%

$2,667,933

26.22%

2906

$39,234.31

2014

115

69.12%

158,193

-19.94%

$2,398,836

-10.09%

1376

$21,042.42

2015

*109

-5.22%

188,181

18.96%

$2,646,378

10.32%

1726

$24,278.70

Harper has one titles over 20K, and three more over 10K.

#9 on this year’s list will be Dark Horse Comics, as they place 16 titles for 112K and $2.3 million.

Dark Horse’s #1 book of the year, like last year, is “Plants Vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon” which nearly racks up 18.3K copies. They also sell over 10K copies of another “PvZ” book, “Bully For You.” Their other strong selling for the year is “Serenity: Leaves On The Wind” with 10.5K sold.

Here’s what Dark Horse’s Western performance looks like in the Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

597

—

413,022

—

$7,607,264

—

692

$14,744.90

2008

734

22.95%

552,815

33.85%

$9,329,828

22.64%

753

$12,710.94

2009

798

8.72%

455,924

-17.53%

$7,757,240

-16.86%

571

$9,720.85

2010

955

19.67%

445,248

-2.34%

$7,852,063

1.22%

466

$8,222.06

2011

1025

7.33%

389,514

-12.52%

$7,102,710

-9.54%

380

$6,929.47

2012

1133

10.54%

377,322

-3.13%

$6,907,772

-2.74%

333

$6,096.89

2013

1238

9.27%

383,391

1.61%

$7,391,831

7.01%

310

$5,970.78

2014

1420

14.70%

421,708

9.99%

$8,982,411

21.52%

297

$6,325.64

2015

*947

-33.31%

376,231

-10.78%

$8,120,937

-9.59%

397

$8,575.44

Dark Horse’s Manga offerings are up in that section. Dark Horse is one of the rare publishers that does a significant business in both Eastern and Western comics, and I’m sure they’d prefer all of their numbers to be represented together. In which case, their Long Tail actually looks like this:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

938

—

662,965

—

$10,936,728

—

707

$11,659.62

2008

1075

14.61%

801,796

20.94%

$12,506,698

14.36%

746

$11,634.14

2009

1253

16.56%

682,421

-14.89%

$10,672,933

-14.66%

545

$8,517.90

2010

1428

13.97%

639,742

-6.25%

$10,485,140

-1.76%

448

$7,342.54

2011

1522

6.58%

578,843

-9.52%

$9,704,940

-7.44%

380

$6,376.44

2012

1626

6.83%

489,695

-15.40%

$8,538,810

-12.02%

301

$5,251.42

2013

1759

8.18%

486,929

-0.56%

$9,070,394

6.23%

277

$5,156.56

2014

1979

12.51%

522,602

7.33%

$10,599,661

16.86%

264

$5,356.07

2015

*1250

-36.84%

511,675

-2.09%

$10,359,104

-2.27%

409

$8,287.28

Dark Horse has three titles over 10K.

To round out this year’s Top 10 publishers, we have at #10 Henry N. Abrams, which publishes both as Abrams Comicarts as well as Amulet Books, though everything charting this year is just Amulet. They place seven books into the Top 750 for almost 109K in sales and $1.2 million.

Amulet publishes the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books, but as noted before, these don’t show on our BookScan list because of how they list their BISACs. Their best-selling book is “El Deafo” which racks up a very impressive 73K sold.

Other than that, they sell OK (sub-10K) numbers of three of “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales” and three volumes of “Explorer.”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2008

10,031

—

$148,675

—

$148,675

—

3344

$49,558.33

2009

25

733.33%

24,116

140.41%

$640,635

330.90%

965

$25,625.40

2010

41

64.00%

48,240

100.03%

$1,109,444

73.18%

1177

$27,059.61

2011

49

19.51%

31,846

-33.98%

$731,054

-34.11%

650

$14,919.47

2012

62

26.53%

37,522

17.82%

$756,650

3.50%

605

$12,204.03

2013

70

12.90%

72,538

93.32%

$3,278,063

333.23%

1036

$46,829.47

2014

88

25.71%

74,083

2.13%

$2,324,820

-29.10%

842

$26,418.41

2015

*92

4.55%

145,633

96.58%

$1,898,267

-18.35%

1583

$20,633.34

Henry N. Abrams has one book over 50k, and none over 10k.

That’s the Top 10 Western publishers, but there are a few more that I’d like to mention.

In the Book publishing world, they talk about “The Big Five” — that would be: Hachette, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. We’ve covered three of those above, but we should at least glance at the other two, I think. In alphabetical order:

Hachette includes the imprints of Little, Brown, Grand Central, and Yen.

Little, Brown is the home of “Tintin,” and they place three books into the Top 750 for a total of 12,579 copies and just over $160K in sales. However, only one of those is “Tintin” (the 3-in-one “Adventures of Tintin v1” sells just over 4700 copies), which seems crazy low to this observer. They do much better with a volume of “Monster High,” which sells 12.4K copies.

Even better than that, Yen, which mostly prints Manga, has a “western” hit with Svetlana Chmaova’s “Awkward,” which sells 16.9K.

Here’s the Long Tail of just the Western books for Hachette, which is very mixed this year

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

15

—

39,181

—

$689,383

—

2,612

$45,958.87

2008

18

20.00%

37,519

-4.24%

$596,609

-13.46%

2,084

$33,144.94

2009

18

—-

40,172

7.07%

$642,935

7.76%

2,232

$35,718.61

2010

19

5.56%

160,992

300.76%

$3,097,996

381.85%

8,473

$163,052.42

2011

24

26.32%

88,131

-45.26%

$1,273,500

-58.89%

3,672

$53,063

2012

28

16.67%

110,897

25.83

$1,565,744

22.95

3,961

$55,919.43

2013

24

-14.29%

39,093

-65.75%

$584,783

-62.65%

1,629

$24,365.96

2014

32

33.33%

38,853

-0.61%

$593,667

1.52%

1,214

$18,552.10

2015

*93

290.63%

76,787

97.63%

$1,066,510

79.65%

826

$11,467.85

And if you add the Manga from Yen, it looks like this:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

25

—

52,077

—

$836,832

—

2,083

$33,473.28

2008

180

332.00%

147,645

183.51%

$1,834,469

119.22%

1,367

$16,985.82

2009

229

112.04%

371,134

151.37%

$4,340,048

132.78%

1,621

$18,952.17

2010

363

58.52%

721,975

94.53%

$9,748,867

124.63%

1,999

$26,856.38

2011

484

33.33%

852,256

18.05%

$11,227,466

15.17%

1761

$23,197.24

2012

576

19.01%

758,845

-10.96%

$10,301,009

-8.25%

1,317

$17,883.70

2013

678

17.71%

731,473

-3.61%

$10,300,204

—-%

1,079

$15,192.04

2014

808

19.17%

720,988

-1.43%

$10,579,169

2.71%

892

$13,093.03

2015

*742

-8.17%

994,407

37.92%

$14,304,955

35.22%

1340

$19,278.92

Hachette has two titles over 10K, on the Western charts.

Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan, has (at least) these imprints: FirstSecond, Metropolitan, Picador, and Square Fish. Those imprints all individually made the Top 750, but there are others down into the Long Tail as well — I have also identified Farrar Straus Giroux, Henry Holt, Hill + Wang, Roaring Brook, Rodale Press, St. Martins Griffin, Times books, and Tor. Holtzbrinck also distributes several other publishers, including Bloomsbury, Drawn & Quarterly, Papercutz, and Seven Seas. Holtzbrinck-owned companies placed sixteen titles in the Top 750, for about 98K and a bit under $1.5 million combined.

The best-seller here from First Second is 14.3K copies of Scott McCloud’s “The Sculptor,” followed closely (like “28 copies” closely!) by Mariko Tamaki’s “This One Summer.” They also do very well with Corey Doctorow and Jen Wang’s “In Real Life,” which moves almost 12K copies.

Square Fish’s top title is Gene Yang’s “American Born Chinese” (just over 29K), followed by Hope Larson’s Adaptation of “A Wrinkle In Time,” which sells just over 12K. Picador’s best-seller is “The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil” (just over 5K), while Metropolitan’s best-seller was “The Arab of the Future” which sold 4453.

Here’s Holtzbrinck’s Long Tail (again, I might have missed an imprint somewhere — trying to tease them all out is a difficult task from their Byzantine org chart).

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

39

—

31,452

—

$559,681

—

806

$14,350.79

2008

66

69.23%

63,473

101.81%

$1,132,767

102.40%

962

$17,163.14

2009

88

33.34%

84,090

32.48%

$1,438,044

26.95%

956

$16,341.41

2010

108

22.73%

68,599

-18.42%

$1,085,311

-24.53%

635

$10,049.18

2011

139

28.70%

114,243

66.54%

$1,794,084

65.31%

822

$12,907.08

2012

165

18.71%

126,745

10.94%

$2,077,143

15.78%

768

$12,588.75

2013

187

13.33%

142,375

12.33%

$2,395,569

15.33%

761

$12,810.53

2014

222

18.72%

190,682

33.93%

$3,096,858

23.27%

859

$13,949.81

2015

*104

-53.15%

99,223

-47.96%

$1,804,001

-41.75%

954

$17,346.16

Holtzbrinck has one book over 20K, and four more books over 10K.

While not one of the “Big Five,” there are other publishers that I would consider both “significant” as well as bookmarket-first who did well in the Top 750: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2 titles), and Hyperion (5) Joe Books (4), and Papercutz (2).

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishes comics both as HMH and Mariner. They place two titles into the Top 750 that total 61K and $926K in sales.

Mariner’s best-seller is Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” which surges insanely forward thanks to a stage play adaptation up to 52K sold (it was 18K last year). They also place 8911 copies of Bechdel’s “Are You My Mother?”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

4

—

20,474

—

$434,495

—

5119

$108,623.75

2008

6

50.00%

14,183

-30.73%

$307,019

-29.34%

2363

$51,169.83

2009

14

133.33%

24,568

73.22%

$436,328

42.12%

1755

$31,166.29

2010

17

21.43%

29,163

18.70%

$532,539

22.05%

1715

$31,325.82

2011

18

5.88%

24,239

-16.88%

$450,536

-15.40%

1347

$25,029.78

2012

21

16.67%

23,562

-2.79%

$402,575

-10.65%

1122

$1,9170.24

2013

29

38.10%

44,558

89.11%

$687,920

70.88%

1536

$23,721.38

2014

27

-6.90%

44,558

26.50%

$552,884

-19.63%

1213

$20,477.19

2015

*33

22.22%

78,357

239.25%

$1,214,786

219.72%

2374

$36,811.70

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just the one book over 50K.

Hyperion is, like Marvel, also owned by Disney. Technically, that probably means I should fold them together, but I resist, how I resist (largely because they are distributed separately). However, if we did that, the combined entity would move one place forward, to #4. Hyperion has five placing titles, doing 56K, and $744K. All are Rick Riordan adaptations — the most successful is “Percy Jackson” (“Lightning Thief” does almost 17.5K). At least we can no longer say they outsell Marvel.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

10

—

39,121

—

$336,771

—

3912

$33,677.10

2008

19

90.00%

41,005

4.82%

$409,051

21.46%

2158

$21,529.00

2009

24

26.32%

23,301

-43.18%

$234,078

-42.78%

971

$9,753.25

2010

26

8.33%

30,860

32.44%

$314,067

34.17%

1187

$12,079.50

2011

29

11.54%

46,553

50.85%

$392,652

25.02%

1605

$13,539.72

2012

31

6.90%

33,105

-28.89%

$376,735

-4.05%

1068

$12,152.74

2013

33

6.45%

102,537

209.73%

$1,298,672

244.72%

3107

$39,353.70

2014

38

15.15%

77,045

-24.86%

$1,015,188

-21.83%

2028

$26,715.49

2015

*57

50.00%

63,290

-17.85%

$831,477

-18.10%

1110

$14,587.32

Hyperion has two books over 10K.

Joe Books is something you don’t see all that often — a new publisher that cracks right into the Top 750. They mostly just do screen-cap fumetti. But their screen-caps of “Inside-Out” sells 22.4K, while “Frozen” moves 21.5K. All together, they placed four titles for 56K and $907K.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2014

1

—

22,740

—

$340,873

—

22,740

$340,873

2015

*13

1200%

66,375

291.88%

$1,047,511

307.30%

5,106

$80,577,77

Joe Books has two titles over 20K, and no more over 10K.

Papercutz, which has two titles placing, for 14K copies and $99k. Both are Lego’s “Ninjago,” the best-selling being vol. 9 (“Night of the Nindroids”) with just under 10K copies sold.They have nothing that charts in the Top 750 that isn’t “Ninjago.”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

65

—

20,121

—

$179,373

—

310

$2,759.58

2008

103

58.46%

39,949

98.54%

$368,008

105.16%

388

$3,572.89

2009

141

36.89%

60,911

52.47%

$594,199

61.46%

432

$4,214.18

2010

190

34.75%

76,986

26.39%

$772,290

29.97%

405

$4,064.68

2011

210

10.53%

76,139

-1.10%

$657,997

-14.80%

363

$3,133.32

2012

258

22.86%

172,744

126.88%

$1,343,044

104.11

670

$5,205.60

2013

298

15.50%

220,048

27.38%

$1,670,814

24.41%

738

$5,606.76

2014

354

18.79%

144,206

-34.47%

$1,173,414

-29.77%

407

$3,314.73

2015

*187

-47.18%

80,223

-44.37%

$707,383

-39.72%

429

$3,782.80

Papercutz has no books with sales over 10K this year.

Outside of those bookstore-native publishers, we have several Direct Market-native publishers who placed more than three titles into the Top 750. Those would be: IDW (9), Oni (6), BOOM! (4), Drawn & Quarterly (4), Archie (2), and Titan (1).

IDW places nine books into the Top 750 for nearly 94K and $1.3 million in sales.

IDW bought Top Shelf in 2015, so a significant portion of that is from the sales of Congressman John Lewis’ “March” — vol. 1 sells 29.7K, while vol. 2 does 22.7K. In 2014, Top Shelf alone didn’t quite manage 17K for “March” vol. 1, so that’s excellent growth in distribution.

Past that it’s kids comics, with 8.9K of “Skylanders: The Kaos Trap” (and almost 7K of “Champions”) and 7.7K copies of “Angry Birds” vol. 1, and 6.9K copies of “My Little Pony.”

Their best-seller is “Skylanders: The Kaos Trap,” with nearly 12K sold. They also did well with the final “Locke and Key” hardcover (8602 sold) and “My Little Pony” digest (7753 sold).

This is IDW’s Long Tail, now including Top Shelf beginning in 2015:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

233

—

102,118

—

$2,090,647

—

438

$8,972.73

2008

335

43.78%

146,125

43.09%

$2,766,505

32.33%

436

$8,258.22

2009

477

42.39%

215,907

47.76%

$4,346,836

57.12%

453

$9,112.86

2010

623

30.61%

161,578

-25.16%

$3,653,680

-15.95%

259

$5,864.65

2011

785

26.00%

206,136

27.58%

$4,884,606

33.69%

263

$6,222,43

2012

937

19.36%

162,599

-21.12%

$4,329,973

-11.35%

174

$4,621.10

2013

1059

13.02%

180,694

11.13%

$4,443,372

2.62%

171

$4,195.82

2014

1134

7.08%

228,895

26.68%

$5,309,992

19.50%

200

$4,641.40

2015

*959

-15.43%

310,512

35.66%

$6,478,023

22.00%

324

$6,754.98

This is what Top Shelf looked like own their own, prior to the purchase:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

88

—

23,317

—

$768,122

—

265

$8,728.66

2008

96

9.09%

24,494

5.05%

$583,498

-24.04%

255

$6,078.10

2009

105

9.38%

46,438

89.59%

$1,025,119

75.69%

442

$9,763.04

2010

112

6.67%

28,911

-37.74%

$702,241

-31.50%

258

$6,270.01

2011

135

20.54%

35,047

21.22%

$791,941

12.77%

260

$5,866.23

2012

136

0.74%

35,433

1.10

$739,701

-6.60%

261

$5,438.98

2013

147

8.09%

47,565

34.24%

$900,059

21.68%

324

$6,122.85

2014

148

0.68%

40,565

-14.72%

$785,952

-12.68%

274

$5,310.49

IDW has two books over 20K, and no more over 10K.

Oni Press continues to do solidly with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim,” although the book doesn’t sell as well as it once did, with only vol. 1, 2 and 6 in various formats charting in the Top 750 any longer. Vol. 1 sells 6.9k in (black-and-white) paperback, and just over 5K in (full-color) hardcover, and the (b&w) boxed set moves 4.8K as well. “Scott Pilgrim” is joined by “Rick and Morty” as Oni sells 4513 copies of vol. 1.

Here’s Oni’s Long Tail, still largely dropping as “Scott Pilgrim” softens over time:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

125

—

11,294

—

$141,829

—

90

$1,134.63

2008

138

10.40%

21,843

93.40%

$320,799

126.19%

158

$2,324.63

2009

149

7.97%

51,584

136.13%

$713,121

122.30%

346

$4,786.05

2010

156

4.70%

446,791

866.14%

$5,882,247

824.86%

2864

$37,706.71

2011

177

13.46%

162,275

-63.68%

$2,786,438

-52.63%

917

$15,742.59

2012

171

-3.39%

80,560

-50.36%

$1,594,016

-42.79%

471

$9,321.73

2013

195

14.04%

68,140

-15.42%

$1,401,748

-12.06%

349

$7,188.45

2014

213

9.23%

61,584

-9.62%

$1,303,069

-7.04%

289

$6,117.70

2015

*165

-22.54%

65,254

5.96%

$1,478,997

11.35%

395

$8,963.62

Oni has no books over 10K.

BOOM! Studios sells four titles into the Top 750, for almost 40K and $588k in sales. “Adventure Time” mostly collapses for some reason in the book channel, making only one appearance with the fourth OGN selling just 4K copies — no, the big hit is the first volume of “Lumberjanes,” which sells 22.6K copies.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

21

—

10,462

—

$246,984

—

498

$11,761.14

2008

44

109.52%

10,943

4.60%

$394,361

59.67%

249

$8,962.75

2009

93

111.36%

25,378

131.91%

$485,485

23.11%

273

$5,220.27

2010

202

117.20%

64,770

155.22%

$1,140,019

134.82%

321

$5,643.66

2011

253

25.25%

75,472

16.52%

$1,435,514

25.92%

298

$5,673.97

2012

307

21.34%

59,758

-20.82%

$1,160,894

-19.13%

195

$3,781.41

2013

347

13.03%

86,637

44.98%

$1,650,374

42.16%

250

$4,756.12

2014

388

11.82%

108,504

25.24%

$1,894,658

14.80%

280

$4,883.14

2015

*295

-23.97%

126,029

16.15%

$2,159,071

13.96%

427

$7,318.88

BOOM! just has the one book over 20K, and nothing further over 10K.

To my sudden surprise, we’ve never had a Long Tail for Drawn & Quarterly in the past. That should change since they placed four tittles into the Top 750 this year, with their top book being 11.4K copies of Kate Beaton’s “Step Aside Pops!” (“Hark A Vagrant” also charts with just over 4K sold). Adrian Tomine’s newest book, “Killing and Dying,” also charts for 9.2K sold.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

62

—

24,689

—

$500,764

—

398

$8,076.84

2008

82

32.26%

42,038

70.27%

$912,774

82.28%

513

$11,131.39

2009

107

30.49%

42,957

2.19%

$920,014

0.79%

401

$8,598.26

2010

126

17.76%

44,737

4.14%

$1,009,387

9.71%

355

$8,011.01

2011

145

15.08%

62,286

39.23%

$1,399,793

38.68%

430

$9,653.74

2012

155

6.90%

43,098

-30.81%

$926,233

-33.83%

278

$5,975.70

2013

189

21.94%

41,887

-2.81%

$893,905

-3.49%

222

$4,729.66

2014

205

8.47%

46,030

9.90%

$1,032,032

15.45%

225

$5,034.30

2015

*219

6.83%

73,471

59.62%

$1,680,878

62.87%

335

$7,675.24

Drawn & Quarterly has one book over 10K.

Archie Comics places just two books in the Top 750, selling 7474 copies combined and $81K. Probably not worth even mentioning if I hadn’t already built them a chart and everything. Their best-seller was a “Sonic” collection with 3869 copies.

Here’s Archie’s Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

18

—

12,443

—

$103,998

—

691

$5,777.67

2008

26

44.44%

25,046

101.29%

$220,207

111.74%

963

$8,469.50

2009

33

26.92%

26,998

7.79%

$246,557

11.97%

818

$7,471.42

2010

43

30.30%

24,828

-8.04%

$227,014

-7.93%

577

$5,279.40

2011

62

44.19%

51,551

-107.63%

$528,353

132.74

831

$8,521.82

2012

85

37.10

66,988

29.95

$797,165

50.88

788

$9,378.41

2013

110

29.41%

79,978

19.39%

$974,889

22.29%

727

$8,862.63

2014

148

92,953%

79,978

16.22%

$1,170,486

20.06%

628

$7,908.69

2015

*165

11.49%

75,222

-19.08%

$892,756

-23.73%

456

$5,410.64

Archie has no books over 10K.

Titan Comics’ multi-title appearance in last year’s list caused me to build them a Long Tail, but this year they only place a single title, “Minions,” which sells 12.2K copies. Still, why waste a chart?

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

104

—

10,782

—

$284,570.90

—

104

$2,736.26

2008

114

9.62%

15,627

44.94%

$478,790.65

68.25%

137

$4,199.92

2009

125

9.65%

12,957

-17.09%

$225,008.15

-53.00%

104

$1,800.07

2010

134

7.20%

11,766

-9.19%

$227,861.70

1.27%

88

$1,700.46

2011

133

—–%

11,199

-4.82%

$227,059.05

-0.04%

84

$1,707.21

2012

142

6.77%

17,612

57.26%

$367,913.49

62.03%

124

$2,590.94

2013

158

11.27%

25,980

47.51%

$529,217.08

43.84%

164

$3,349.48

2014

213

34.81%

43,669

68.09%

$857,608.68

62.05%

205

$4,026.33

2015

*175

-17.84%

58,544

34.06%

$887,084

3.44%

335

$5,069.05

Titan places one book over 10K.

No publisher that has not been mentioned placed more than three titles within the Top 750, which leaves me with 20 from 16 different smaller publishers.

There are two comics that sell 20K or over in this cohort: just over 44K copies of Roz Chast’s “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” from Bloomsbury (down from 73K in 2014), and 30.1K copies of “Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made” from Candlewick. Them’s big numbers.

Then there are four titles that sold over 10K — “Username: Evie” (15.6K) from Running Press, “Quest For The Golden Apple” (13.8K) from Sky Pony Press, “The Odyssey” by Gareth Hinds (12K) from Candlewick, and George R.R. Martin’s “The Hedge Knight” (10.2K) from Jet City Comics (which is a wholly owned imprint of Amazon).

The remaining fourteen titles came in under 10K, and include 7878 of Jeff Smith’s complete “Bone” and 6899 copies of Phoebe Gloeckner’s “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” which was also a motion picture in 2015.

One final little bit of number crunching before I go for the year. If we look at the entirety of the 22K-long “Long Tail” BookScan list, how do the publishers stack up in 2015? We’ll consider it in dollars, this time, including both “east” and “west” comics, and round everything to the nearest hundred-thousand just for ease of presentation.

#1 DC — $43.0 Million

#2 Viz — $28.1

#3 Marvel Comics — $28.0

#4 Image Comics — $26.2

#5 Scholastic — $17.2

#6 Hachette — $14.3

#7 Simon & Schuster — $13.4

#8 Kodansha — $10.9

#9 Dark Horse — $10.4

#10 Penguin Random House — $8.5

And that’s pretty much what BookScan in 2015 looks like to these eyes.

2015 Overview

An initial overall note on this year’s chart: I continue to cut out anything that clearly wasn’t a “comic” (though such definitions are sometimes difficult to make). For instance, the #1 & #2 books of the year — The “Dork Diaries” volumes (and more on that below) are not really a “comic” — they have words, they have pictures, but they don’t work together in the way I’d think we’d commonly agree is “comics.” However, it’s just close enough that I decided to keep it. Much less controversial (I’d imagine) is my decision to remove prose-driven books like DK Publishing’s “Marvel Encyclopedia” (47,9642 sold in 2015), which, while nominally about comics or comics culture, is factually an encyclopedic prose book with pictures. Or “Dork Diaries:OMG! All About Me! Diary” (33,811 sold in 2015) which is actually a branded write-in Journal, or “DC Super Heroes: My First Book of Girl Power” (18,189 copies sold in 2015) where the Amazon “Look Inside” clearly shows is an illustrated reader for 2nd graders. There is clearly an enormous market for this kind of material — in fact, in many cases a larger market than for the actual comics themselves — it just isn’t the “comics” market, as I would define it.

In all, I removed 27 items from the Top 750 that didn’t match my personal definition of “comics,” to make room for 27 items that I think are comics. However, if there was a legitimate question about it, like our #1 book, I erred on the side of keeping it.

Here’s the big picture for the Top 750 in 2015:

Year

Total Units

Growth

Total Dollars

Growth

2003

5,495,584

—–

$66,729,053

—–

2004

6,071,123

10.5%

$67,783,487

1.6%

2005

7,007,345

15.4%

$75,459,669

11.3%

2006

8,395,195

19.8%

$90,411,902

19.8%

2007

8,584,317

2.3%

$95,174,425

5.27%

2008

8,334,276

-2.9%

$101,361,173

6.5%

2009

7,634,453

-8.4%

$93,216,014

-8.0%

2010

6,414,336

-15.9%

$85,266,166

-8.5%

2011

5,696,163

-11.2%

$79,961,951

-6.2%

2012

5,696,163

-4.53%

$89,918,354

12.45%

2013

5,654,351

3.97%

$96,062,709

6.83%

2014

6,659,031

17.77%

$112,768,709

17.39%

2015

*8,762,983

31.60%

$141,226,518

25.24%

So, yeah, that’s an astonishing level of growth in 2015, and it brings the Top 750 to the highest numbers it has ever charted in the history of this exercise. Amazing performance, and perhaps the clearest sign we can show of the transformation of comics material to Legitimate Art Form.

The trend for books in general through BookScan appears to be a general growth of 2.8% — which makes comics-material far far stronger than the curve. Clearly both print is dead, and comics are doomed — tell your friends!

There’s now probably too many live-action media based on comics and super heroes. In 2015, Television alone had six continuing shows with “The Walking Dead,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, “Agent Carter, “Arrow,” “The Flash,” and “Gotham” while it added five new series: “Daredevil” “iZombie,” “Jessica Jones,” “Powers” and “Supergirl.” 2016 is going to add six more: “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Lucifer,” “Luke Cage,” “Outcast” “Preacher” and “Wynonna Earp!” Sheesh!

2015 movies brought us a smaller than usual crop — just “Ant-Man,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Fantastic Four,” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

It is often very difficult to draw a straight line between significant comic sales and adaptations, though there are some notable exceptions (“The Walking Dead” would be one).

As I noted, I primarily write about the top 750 because a) that’s all the data I was initially leaked back in 2003, b) it’s a “manageable” chunk of data, and c) “as above, so below” — the top 750 represents about half of sales. However, since 2007, I’ve received the “entire” database, which now gives us a solid eight years of data to track. We refer to this as “the Long Tail.” Here’s what the sales of all comics sales BookScan tracks in this category looks like — but, seriously, let me remind you that the dataset changes enough each year this is a fairly meaningless set of comparisons! Prior to 2013, this didn’t include Walmart. Please please please read “Some Notes Specific to 2015 Data!” above!

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

13,181

—–

15,386,549

—–

$183,066,142.30

—–

1167

$13,888.64

2008

17,571

24.98%

15,541,769

1.00%

$199,033,741.57

8.02%

885

$11,327.40

2009

19,692

12.07%

14,095,145

-9.31%

$189,033,736.31

-5.02%

599.52

$11,327.40

2010

21,993

11.68%

12,130,232

-9.31%

$172,435,244.86

-8.78%

552

$7,840.32

2011

23,945

8.88%

11,692,058

-3.61%

$175,634,490.77

1.86%

488

$7,334.91

2012

23,365

-2.42%

9,562,236

-18.22%

$164,415,366.07

-6.39

409

$7,036.82

2013

24,492

4.82%

10,153,628

6.18%

$176,419,370.45

7.30%

415

$7,325.63

2014

26,976

10.14%

11,820,324

16.41%

$207,598,355.60

17.67%

438

$7,695.56

2015

* 22,431

-16.85%

15,269,550

29.18%

$259,807,532.36

25.15%

681

$11,582.52

Despite the 2015 asterisk of losing nearly 17% of the books on the list due to how it was generated, it doesn’t seem to impact the bottom line as much — unit sales are still up by almost a third, with dollars up by a quarter. These are entirely fantastic results, across the board, and show growth at both the “bottom” as well as the top.

Let’s take a look at the Top 20 best-selling items on the 2015 chart; it looks like this:

352,791 — DORK DIARIES 10

296,415 — DORK DIARIES 9

263,932 — DRAMA

240,045 — SMILE

219,421 — SISTERS

116,683 — KRISTY’S GREAT IDEA: FULL-COLOR

115,424 — DORK DIARIES 1

89,774 — BIG NATE: SAY GOOD-BYE TO DORK

73,258 — EL DEAFO

69,913 — BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE HC

69,748 — JEDI ACADEMY

68,081 — THE TRUTH ABOUT STACEY: FULL-COLOR

66,898 — BIG NATE’S GREATEST HITS

66,442 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V3 TP

62,666 — BIG NATE: WELCOME TO MY WORLD

60,493 — THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM V1 TP

60,485 — BIG NATE: THE CROWD GOES WILD!

58,818 — HYPERBOLE AND A HALF

58,338 — PERSEPOLIS 1

58,261 — DORK DIARIES 9 TALES FRO B&N EDITION

There are quite a number of take-away’s from this year’s Top 20. First and foremost: fifteen of the twenty are comics aimed at children; and at the top of the chart, the numbers these books are selling is exploding.

Let’s start with Rachel Renee Russell’s “Dork Diaries,” which took places #1, #2, #7 and #20. “Dork Diaries” is only kind of vaguely “comics” to my eyes, but it is also not not-comics. In 2014 the best-selling volume that charted came in at 152K — in 2015 the new released volumes showed up with more than twice that number of copies — with 353K for vol. 10 and 355K for vol. 9 (#20 is a “Barnes & Noble Exclusive Cover” version of vol. 9 — this would seem to suggest that retailer exclusives don’t add that much in the book channel?).

Of course, the problem is we only get to find out how vol. 1, 9 and 10 sell. Vol. 2-8 are apparently not BISCED “comics”-first! One presumes that many of those also sold in the 100K range as well, in 2015. In fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that far more than a million and a half combined copies of “Dork Diaries” sold through BookScan reporters in 2015.

The next four places #3-6 on the Top 20 are owned by Raina Telgemeier, with “Drama” doing 264K (it sold just 94K in 2014), “Smile” at 240k (151K in 2014), “Sisters at 219K (it was the #1 book of 2014’s report… At 179K!) and vol. 1 of the newly colored “Baby Sitter’s Club” pulling down 116k. Raina also takes the #12 book with another “Baby Sitter’s Club” volume at 68K. That’s an astounding performance, and an absolutely incredible growth in sales year-over-year.

Where is this growth coming from? Is it coming from all quarters as more and more stores realize the strength of middle-school-age-oriented graphic novels, or is it coming from big players like WalMart going big on the category? Anecdotally, “Smile” and “Sisters” are both in my own store’s Top 100.

Raina has six books that chart altogether (though there are 27 entries in the full list, due to various editions and formats), and she sold 990k copies this year, for more than $11 million in sales — almost 6.5% of all the sales of the comics report for BookScan were by Raina Telgemeier (and almost 4.25% of the dollars!) That’s purely incredible (and just a little bit insane)

Coming in at #7, is Lincoln Peirce’s “Big Nate: Say Goodbye to Dork City,” his new release from March of 2015. Peirce is also in the chart at #13 for “Greatest Hits,” his new release from Jan of 2015, and at #15 for “Welcome to My World,” his new release from Sep 15. He also places at #16 for 2014’s “The Crowd Goes Wild.” He also has nine other books within the Top 750. That’s a lot of “Big Nate” books, and all aimed squarely at kids — almost $4.5 million dollars worth!

At #9, is Cece Bell’s “El Deafo” — that’s eight of the top 10 books by a woman creator.

The first super hero comic book (as well as first comic that’s aimed at adults, sort of oddly that they’re the same thing?) comes in at #10 with “Batman: The Killing Joke” at almost 70K sold. This, too, is an enormous jump from 2014 sales, where it only sold 32K copies

The first volume of Jeffrey Brown’s “Jedi Academy” semi-comics book comes in at #11, with almost 70K sold in the Year of Star Wars’ return — yet it is down from 83K in 2014.

Robert Kirkman makes the Top 20 with two Walking Dead Compendia — #14 for the newly released vol. 3 at 66K, then vol. 1 coming in at #16 with 60K. That’s down a little bit from 2014 when vol. 1 sold 68K.

Finally, the back of the Top 20 brings us Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” at #18 at 59K (it sold nearly 130K the previous year), and, at #19, Marjane Satrapi’s first volume of “Persepolis,” at just over 58K. Like most years, the second volume of “Persepolis” takes a deep fall (all the way down to, ew, 5K!), while the complete edition of the book sells about 28K.

Female dominance of the sales charts is getting stronger, as only eight of the Top Twenty are by a male.

What if you sort the chart by dollars grossed, instead? That changes the picture a little, but not as much as previous years — now even “The Walking Dead’s” $60 cover price can’t offset the power of Rachel Renee Russell’s “Dork Diaries,” although all three Compendia now place.

$4,935,546.09 — DORK DIARIES 10

$4,146,845.85 — DORK DIARIES 9

$3,985,855.58 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V3 TP

$3,628,975.07 — THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM V1 TP

$2,900,612.68 — DRAMA

$2,732,964.43 — THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V2 TP

$2,638,094.55 — SMILE

$2,411,436.79 — SISTERS

$1,614,781.76 — DORK DIARIES 1

$1,282,346.17 — KRISTY’S GREAT IDEA: FULL-COLOR

$1,257,734.87 — BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE HC

$1,233,792.00 — CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT? HC

1,175,771.82 — HYPERBOLE AND A HALF

$1,165,833.48 — CIVIL WAR TP

$1,163,843.10 — PERSEPOLIS 1

$906,026.52 — JEDI ACADEMY

$896,842.26 — BIG NATE: SAY GOOD-BYE TO DORK

$869,005.02 — BIG NATE’S GREATEST HITS

$815,071.39 — DORK DIARIES 9 TALES FRO B&N EDITION

$802,175.10 — EL DEAFO

Really, the biggest change here is that Roz Chast’s “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” places along with Marvel’s “Civil War,” now their best-selling title.

Fifteen books in the “million dollars or more” club, which is a new record for the chart.

How about if we sort it by author? Here are people with more than 10 books placing in the Top 750:

KIRKMAN ROBERT — 39

ISAYAMA HAJIME — 21

SNYDER SCOTT — 18

JOHNS GEOFF — 15

PEIRCE LINCOLN — 13

MASHIMA HIRO — 12

TOBOSO YANA — 11

KISHIMOTO MASASHI — 11

KAWAHARA REKI — 11

KIBUISHI KAZU — 10

This is a lot smaller list than previous years — only ten people who place more than ten books each, with Kirkman being the real winner here. Just over 2 million copies, total, of the Top 750 are by these ten authors, or a bit under 23% of the total sales volume — in 2014 it was nineteen authors, taking 35% of volume, so things are widening out nicely as the market rises.

Let’s add some dollar amounts, with these being all of the authors selling over $1M combined in books, according to BookScan. That looks like this:

KIRKMAN ROBERT — $17,023,197.97

RUSSELL RACHEL RENEE $11,122,490.41

TELGEMEIER RAINA — $10,970,503.74

PEIRCE LINCOLN — $4,416,675.33

SNYDER SCOTT — $4,395,252.34

ISAYAMA HAJIME — $3,141,093.04

MOORE ALAN — $2,939,866.66

VAUGHAN BRIAN K. — $2,864,944.27

KIBUISHI KAZU — $2,425,742.85

JOHNS GEOFF — $2,186,577.95

SATRAPI MARJANE — $1,962,652.35

MILLAR MARK — $1,584,858.96

GAIMAN NEIL — $1,565,773.85

BROWN JEFFREY — $1,538,340.75

KISHIMOTO MASASHI — $1,433,820.04

ISHIDA SUI — $1,425,210.84

MILLER FRANK — $1,383,524.40

YANG GENE LUEN — $1,309,806.41

SPIEGELMAN ART — $1,290,464.90

CHAST ROZ — $1,233,792.00

BROSH ALLIE — $1,175,771.82

MARVEL COMICS — $1,133,398.43

O’MALLEY BRYAN LEE — $1,128,915.31

LOEB JEPH — $1,092,562.80

KAWAHARA REKI — $1,077,240.00

STEVENSON NOELLE — $1,049,896.71

TOBOSO YANA — $1,042,626.00

This gives us 27 authors, who sell a combined $83.8M worth of books. That is just under one-third of all comics dollars being spent on BookScan (all 22,431 entries!) from the pens of just a small number of people.

What you can take from this is that only a small number of creators drive the majority of the business in comics (and books in general, I think); and conversely, this probably means that most comics aren’t actually significantly profitable any given year.

(The best one is “Marvel Comics” where the publisher is listed in the author field, sheesh)

Let’s switch our attention to looking how publishers performed.

As a way to make the publisher breakdowns more readable, I split the chart into “eastern” (Manga) and “western” comics, because I think there are a few clear market distinctions between those categories. So, without further ado:

2015 Manga

No real clear dominance of series in Manga in 2015 — sales are up for the second year in a row, but over a wider variety of titles than historically typical.

Here’s a year-to-year comparison chart for the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

447

3,361,966

$34,368,409

2004

518

4,603,558

$45,069,684

2005

594

5,691,425

$53,922,514

2006

575

6,705,624

$61,097,050

2007

575

6,837,355

$61,927,238

2008

514

5,624,101

$53,033,579

2009

451

4,414,705

$41,068,604

2010

436

3,117,019

$30,212,561

2011

392

2,627,570

$27,017,081

2012

367

1,908,186

$21,324,368

2013

315

1,665,487

$21,256,777

2014

271

1,748,185

$22,601,720

2015

*279

2,033,534

$26,191,474

Another up year for manga in America, though grow is slower than it is on the Western side. The top selling Manga in the US, via the BookScan reporters is “Tokyo Ghoul,” with just a bit over 50K in sales.

While 2014 was led by the dominance of “Attack on Titan” (where vol. 1 sold 58K), that pulls way back in 2015, with vol. 1 only selling a relatively meager 34K. All 17 volumes continue to chart in the Top 750 (along with nine other spin-off volumes), but the bottom of the sales (vol. 7) is under 10k. Collectively “AoT” sells 286K copies, which is a pretty big drop from 2014’s 394K sold.

The numbers for Manga as a category down into the “Long Tail” paint the picture.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

6231

—

11,323,487

—

$108,770,537

—

1817

$17,456.35

2008

7842

20.54%

10,173,091

-11.31%

$100,800,283

-7.91%

1297

$12,853.90

2009

8756

11.6%

8,148,490

-19.90%

$81,770,442

-18.78%

931

$9,338.79

2010

8764

6,239,725

-23.42%

$67,092,668

-17.95%

712

$7,655.48

2011

8991

2.59%

5,690,327

-8.80%

$62,810,728

-6.38%

633

$6,985.96

2012

6332

-29.57%

3,510,057

-38.32%

$40,943,613

-34.81%

554

$6,466.14

2013

7024

10.93%

3,516,208

0.01%

$44,651,823

9.06 %

501

$6,357.04

2014

7452

6.09%

3,914,385

11.32%

$51,557,925

15.47%

525

$6,918.67

2015

*4412

-40.79%

4,580,434

17.02%

$62,253,624

20.75%

1038

$14,110.07

Scrub out all of the OOP books from Tokyopop and Del Rey (and others), and the title count crashes, yet sales sure still hold their own. Again, this is lower growth than the “Western” side of things — but it is still sold and spectacular growth all things considered.

I count 89 distinct series among the 279 placing manga titles in the Top 750 — sales continue to widen rather than just being dominated by a small number of series, as in the past. Here is the Top 20 manga:

50,541 — TOKYO GHOUL V1 TP

34,107 — ATTACK ON TITAN 1

30,110 — TOKYO GHOUL, VOLUME 2

28,371 — ONE-PUNCH MAN, VOLUME 1

26,756 — THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST TP

23,807 — NARUTO, VOL. 72

23,730 — DEATH NOTE BLACK EDITION, VOL.

23,340 — NARUTO, VOL. 70

22,541 — FAIRY TAIL V01

20,437 — NARUTO, VOL. 71

20,125 — BLACK BUTLER, VOLUME 1

19,814 — TOKYO GHOUL, VOLUME 3

19,108 — ATTACK ON TITAN 2

18,667 — NARUTO, VOL. 69

18,633 — ATTACK ON TITAN 15

18,532 — ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM, VOL.

18,065 — ONE-PUNCH MAN, VOLUME 2

15,977 — BIG HERO 6, VOL. 1

15,898 — BLUE EXORCIST, VOLUME 1

15,822 — UNOFFICIAL HATSUNE MIX

These are solid results, though Manga is looking for it’s “Next Attack on Titan” or “Next Naruto,” both of which are seeing heavy declines — in 2008 in the newest volume of “Naruto” sold over 104K copies by itself.

Breaking down the manga portion of the chart by publisher, Viz takes 124 of the 279 manga spots in the Top 750, keeping them as the overwhelmingly dominant manga player with a bit under half of the placing titles. Within the Top 750, Viz charted about 978K pieces, for nearly $12 million — Viz continues to control the manga charts as they have for a very long time now, and it is a bit hard of envisioning anyone really challenging them much for that role.

Viz has one book (vol. 1 of “Tokyo Ghoul”) that does over 50K in sales in 2015, another seven that do over 20K, and fourteen more that do over 10K.

In second place among manga publishers, we have Kodansha Comics, which weakens a little this year and places 61 titles within the top 750, with 493K in sales, and $6.1 million dollars (compared to 574K and $7.2m in 2014).

Kodansha’s licenses formerly were both the original backbone of Tokyopop, as well as being the majority of Del Rey Manga. Kodansha pulled Tokyopop’s license in March of ’09 and Del Rey in October of ’10. You may want to look at those publisher’s listings below to get a better historical overview.

Kodansha’s current best-seller is “Attack on Titan,” but, as noted above, the bloom is off the rose a bit there — vol. 1 just pulls in 34K, while vol. 2 drops below 20k. The next best-seller is “Fairy Tail” at nearly 23K.

These Long Tail figures are just for Kodansha-published titles, and they reflect that Kodansha, itself, first started publishing in 2010:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2010

9

—-%

13,291

—-%

$322,717

—-%

1477

$35,857.44

2011

108

1200.00%

197,021

1482.36%

$2,537,221

786.21%

1825

$23,492.79

2012

246

127.78%

324,827

64.87%

$4,026,770

58.71%

1320

$16,368.98

2013

320

30.08%

501,554

54.41%

$6,299,487

56.44%

1567

$19,685.90

2014

442

38.13%

821,298

63.75%

$10,481,008

66.38%

1858

$23,712.69

2015

455

2.94%

855,347

4.15%

$10,938,531

4.37%

1880

$24,040.73

That’s pretty weak growth, and well under the market as a whole.

In 2015 Kodansha has just two titles over 20K, and 19 more over 10K.

The #3 manga publisher is now Yen Press, which places 68 titles in the Top 750, with about 407K copies sold, and nearly $5.8 million retail gross — they’re within striking distance of Kodansha. Yen is a division of Hachette (more on them later).

Here’s the Long Tail for Yen, reversing their prior sales drops, and showing their biggest sales to date.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

10

—

12,896

—

$147,449

—

1290

$14,744.90

2008

90

800.00%

110,126

753.95%

$1,237,860

739.52%

1,224

$13,754.00

2009

211

134.44%

330,962

200.53%

$3,697,113

198.67%

1,569

$17,521.86

2010

344

63.03%

560,983

69.50%

$6,650,871

79.89%

1,680

$19,333.93

2012

548

19.13%

647,948

-15.20%

$8,735,264

-12.24%

1,182

$15,940.26

2013

654

19.34%

692,380

6.86%

$9,715,421

11.22%

1,059

$14,855.38

2014

776

18.65%

682,135

-1.48%

$9,985,502

2.78%

776

$12,867.92

2015

649

-16.37%

917,620

34.52%

$13,248,445

32.68%

1414

$20,413.63

Their best-selling title is vol. 1 of “Black Butler” at just over 20K sold, followed by “Big Hero 6” at just under 16K. They have one title over 20K, and six more over 10K.

The fourth largest publisher of manga in 2014, on the Top 750 of BookScan is Seven Seas, which places 18 titles, for 110K and $1.4 million in sales. This is a solid rise on last year’s 67K and $886K.

Seven Seas’ Long Tail looks like this, another solid year for them.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

54

—

50,641

—

$558,450

—

938

$10,341.67

2008

76

41.74%

80,112

58.20%

$833,667

49.28%

1,054

$10,969.30

2009

97

27.63%

74,967

-6.42%

$807,666

-3.12%

773

$8,326,45

2010

93

-4.12%

75,764

1.06%

$875,612

8.41%

815

$9,415.18

2011

118

26.88%

116,360

53.58%

$1,426,618

62.93%

986

$12,089.98

2012

151

27.97%%

124,262

6.79%

$1,684,994

18.11%

823

$11,158.90

2013

223

47.68%

204,419

64.51%

$2,942,608

74.64%

917

$13,195.55

2014

300

34.53%

284,484

39.17%

$3,979,338

35.23%

948

$13,264.46

2015

*304

1.34%

374,715

31.72%

$5,177,568

30.11%

1233

$17,031.47

Their best-selling title is “Monster Musume” vol. 6, which sells just over 11K copies. It is their sole book over 10K.

Eastern Publisher #5 will be Dark Horse, surging forward a slot, with four titles placing in the Top 750, for 28K copies sold and $500K in dollar sales.

Looking at the Long Tail, this is what Dark Horse’s (manga only!) recent performance looks like — they finally reverse years of drops, to steady the ship greatly.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

341

—

249,943

—

$3,329,464

—

733

$14,744.90

2008

420

23.17%

248,981

-0.38%

$3,176,870

-4.58%

593

$7,563.98

2009

455

8.33%

226,497

-9.03%

$2,915,693

-8.22%

498

$6,408.12

2010

473

3.96%

194,494

-14.13%

$2,633,077

-9.69%

411

$5,566.76

2011

497

5.07%

189,329

-2.66%

$2,602,230

-1.17%

381

$5,235.86

2012

493

-0.80%

112,373

-40.65%

$1,631,038

-37.32%

228

$3,308.39

2013

521

5.68%

103,538

-7.86%

$1,678,563

2.91%

199

$3,221.81

2014

559

7.29%

100,894

-2.60%

$1,617,251

-3.65%

180

$2,893.11

2015

*303

-45.80%

135,444

34.24%

$2,238,167

38.39%

447

$7,386.69

Dark Horse Manga only has the one title over 10k.

There’s more about Dark Horse down below in the “Western” section.

Dropping down to sixth largest publisher of manga, as measured by the BookScan Top 750, is Vertical. They place just four books into the Top 750, 17K copies, for $354K — that’s also a rise from the previous year.

The Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

25

—

23,444

—

$417,914

—

938

$16,716.56

2008

34

36.00%

21,003

-10.41%

$343,109

-8.21%

617

$10,091.44

2009

39

14.71%

19,434

-7.47%

$325,437

-5.15%

498

$8,344.54

2010

62

58.97%

33,097

70.30%

$494,098

51.83%

534

$7,969.32

2011

84

35.48%

49,062

48.24%

$699,253

41.52%

584

$8,324.44

2012

118

40.48%

45,026

-8.23%

$671,086

-4.03%

382

$5,687.17

2013

159

34.75%

61,906

37.49%

$1,128,252

68.12%

389

$7,095.92

2014

187

17.61%

83,312

34.58%

$1,491,984

32.24%

446

$7,978.53

2015

*162

-13.37%

110,172

32.24%

$1,956,167

31.11%

680

$12,075.10

Their best-selling title is “Ajin” vol. 1 with 5095 copies sold.

2015 Western Publishers

When I say “Western” here, I mean publishers/work from Europe and America, as opposed to Asia, not publishers of the genre!

I’d like to continue to remind you that in 2008 there was some sort of behind-the-scenes recategorization in what got sent to me — I now know this is probably a change in BISAC codes! — and most of the “cartoon-strip humor” books like “Calvin & Hobbes” and “The Far Side” suddenly disappeared, so there’s kind of a not-strictly apples thing going on with the pre-2008 numbers here. Do keep that in mind when making comparisons both in the Top 750 chart, as well as the Long Tail.

Naturally, BookScan can’t seem to keep some sort of internally-consistent method of categorizing titles that doesn’t seem to change in some fashion from year-to-year — there was an influx of “strip” comics last year, and a few more this year too. It is a limitation of how publishers assign BISACs and in what order.

Here comes some exceptional year-over-year growth in the Top 750!

Year

# of Placing Titles

Unit Sales

Dollar Sales

2003

304

2,133,618

$32,360,644

2004

233

1,467,535

$22,713,802

2005

142

1,315,920

$21,537,155

2006

174

1,689,571

$29,314,852

2007

175

1,746,962

$33,247,187

2008

236

2,710,175

$48,327,594

2009

299

3,219,748

$52,147,410

2010

314

3,297,317

$54,515,605

2011

358

3,068,593

$77,254,870

2012

383

3,530,143

$68,593,986

2013

435

3,988,864

$74,805,932

2014

479

4,910,846

$90,166,989

2015

*471

6,729,449

$115,035,044

Record breaking figures.

Let’s take a look at the Long Tail for Western publishers collectively:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Pieces

% Change

Total Dollars

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

3,029,039

—

74,595,605

—

$558,450

—

436

$10,733.18

2008

9728

39.97%

5,368,678

77.24%

$98,233,459

31.69%

552

$10,098.01

2009

10,936

12.30%

5,946,595

10.76%

$107,263,294

9.19%

544

$9,808.27

2010

13,229

20.97%

5,890,507

-0.01%

$105,342,577

-0.02%

445

$7,963.00

2012

17,031

13.89%

6,052,179

0.84%

$123,471,753

9.44%

355

$7,249.82

2013

17,468

2.57%

6,637,420

9.67%

$131,767,547

6.72%

380

$7,543.37

2014

19,524

11.77%

7,905,939

19.11%

$156,040,431

18.21%

405

$7,992.24

2015

*18,019

-7.71%

10,689,116

34.44%

$197,553,909

26.60%

593

$10,963.64

Again, this is a great collective performance, compared to the overall state of print books in 2015.

Next, we’ll survey each of the publishers, and their best-selling titles, ranking them by the number of pieces they sold this year.

Since we’re tracking by the number of copies sold, 2015 brings us a large upset with the #1 Western publisher in the Top 750 now being Scholastic. Scholastic has several imprints — besides the Graphix imprint, they also publish Arthur A. Levine and Blue Sky, and together, they place 31 titles in 2015 for almost 1.4 million copies, and $16.4 million in sales.

(Though, note that this is exclusively through BookScan reporters — there is a working assumption that whatever retail bookstore sales we’re seeing here are just a tiny fraction of their overall sales — between Book Fairs, school sales, Library sales and such, Scholastic might be racking up much more impressive numbers, but I can only analyze what data I actually have!)

Not only does Scholastic take this position with a relatively low number of placing titles (just over a quarter of our #2 publisher), but this is the first time that a primarily kids-focused publisher has taken over the #1 spot. Things are, as they say, changing.

In alphabetical order by imprint:

Arthur A. Levine places just one book into the Top 750: just over 10K copies of “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan.

Blue Sky is also just one book in the Top 750 — Dav Pilkey’s “Ook & Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen,” comes in just a notch under 8500 copies sold.

The Graphix imprint has 23 placing titles, for just over 1.2 million in sales, and a bit under $14 million in dollars, nearly doubling last year. Obviously, Graphix’s big hits are the Raina Telgemeier books (“Sisters,” “Smile,” “Drama,” and the “Baby0Sitter’s Club” adaptations), all of which are discussed up top.

Graphix also does extremely well with Jennifer Holm’s “Sunny Side Up,” which scores almost 29K copies sold in 2015. Kazu Kibuishi’s “Amulet,” continues to soar, with all six volumes and a box set of vol. 1-3 charting, with vol. 1 seling an incredible 24K copies. Jeff Smith’s “Bone” slips a bit, with only six of the nine volumes appearing in the Top 750 this year. Vol. 1, “Out From Boneville,” sells a bit over 15K copies this year.

Scholastic also publishes (without an imprint) the “Star Wars Jedi Academy” books by Jeffrey Brown which pulled down 79K and 49K for vol. 1 and vol. 2 this year. They also sell over 12K copies of “Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.”

The Long Tail for Scholastic looks like this — really an astonishingly great growth this year:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

28

—

203,900

—

$2,018,694

—

7282

$72,096.21

2008

39

39.29%

346,134

69.76%

$3,498,012

73.28%

8875

$89,692.62

2009

52

33.33%

432,070

24.83%

$4,654,686

33.07%

8309

$89,513.19

2010

60

15.38%

361,086

-16.43%

$4,084,718

-12.25%

6018

$68,078.63

2011

72

20.00%

419,010

16.04%

$4,708,860

15.28%

5819

$65,400.83

2012

76

5.56%

325,088

-22.42%

$3,955,249

-16.00%

4277

$52,042.75

2013

91

19.74%

437,590

34.61%

$5,365,921

35.67%

4809

$58,966.16

2014

97

6.59%

846,277

93.39%

$10,204,175

90.17%

8725

$105,197.68

2015

*140

44.33%

1,449,296

71.26%

$17,170,714

68.27%

10,352

$122,647.96

The last three years of growth for Scholastic has been nothing short of meteoric.

Scholastic has three books over 200K, another over 100K, three more over 50K, six more over 20K, and another four over 10K. Great year for them.

In 2015, it is an upset for DC Entertainment as they drop into the #2 position as the best-selling Western publisher in the Top 750.

In 2015 they placed 119 titles in the Top 750, for 1.07 million units, and just over $21.7 million in retail dollars, from their two charting imprints. “DC” itself is 100 of those placements, while Vertigo represents 19.

Here’s a year-to-year comparison chart of the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

74

336,569

$6,151,258

2004

39

179,440

$3,135,983

2005

42

298,484

$5,440,001

2006

59

551,160

$10,246,082

2007

58

487,467

$9,953,976

2008

71

1,015,864

$19,805,098

2009

93

1,223,733

$24,061,834

2010

96

648,403

$12,523,128

2011

107

660,706

$13,083,378

2012

104

688,870

$14,811,979

2013

130

767,686

$15,620,981

2014

131

931,239

$19,207,755

2015

119

1,074,304

$21,701,088

DC has yet another banner year during 2015 in the book stores, according to the BookScan reporters — coming within striking distance of “best year ever.” They still have a little way to go until they top that ’09 performance (mostly driven by the incredible comics success of “Watchmen,” which was driven by the film).

As noted toward the top of the report, DC’s highest placing book is “Batman: The Killing Joke,” which sold almost 70K copies, and was the tenth-best-selling comic overall for the BookScan reporters. It’s probably no real surprise that Batman continues to be DC’s most lucrative property, with 54 of their 100 placing titles being Batman or Batman-related (“Nightwing,” “Batgirl,” et al), totaling over 562K copies sold, larger than many publishers just with a single family. Those 55 titles are split with some 32 of them being “New 52”-era stories, and 23 of them being “classic” stories.

For that matter, the “New 52” branding seems solid enough in book stores — 55 of the one hundred DC Universe titles are “New 52”-driven titles.

Other notable “Batman” related books include Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight Returns” at #3 (34K), “Court of Owls” at #5 (26K), “Year One” at #6 (25K), “City of Owls” at #7 (24K), and “Hush” at #10 (21K). I especially find the tight spread on Snyder & Capullo’s first two volumes to be especially strong — usually there’s a big drop between first and second volumes. Frank Miller’s sequel to “DKR,” “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” manages to make the Top 750 with a comparatively weak 5690 sold.

DC’s #2 title in 2015 is “Watchmen,” coming in at over 34K in paperback, and another 5013 copies in hardcover (the older edition of the paperback shows up in the bottom of the chart with an additional 248 copies sold). Despite that, the “Before Watchmen” prequels do pretty poorly, with none showing up in the BookScan Top 750, and the best-selling of them (“Comedian/Rorschach”) just selling a bare 2613 copies, and the worst-selling (“Ozymandius/Crimson Corsair”), doing a bare 1021.

Other significant DC sales are “Sandman: Overture” coming in as their fourth best-seller with 28K sold, despite only being on sale for a single month in 2015 (and compared to 18.5K sold of “Preludes & Nocturnes” for the entire year); “Suicide Squad” as their eighth best-seller, in advance of the upcoming film, with 23K (vol. 2 drops to just a hair over 10K); and “V For Vendetta” being their ninth-best-selling title with 22K.

DC also has a number of television projects in 2015 — I think it is fairly easy to ascribe the just-under 20K copies of the first “New 52” volume of “The Flash” (it was just 13K in 2014), and the seven other flash-related titles as being driven by the success of the show. Ditto with the 7304 copies of “Hellblazer: Original Sins” is probably connected to the “Constantine” television show (though it sold more than 9K in 2014), although there’s only a single “Green Arrow” book charting (5K of “Year One”) — and not a single “Supergirl” book in the Top 750 (not that they have anything substantial in print — vol. 1 of the “New 52” run limps-in downchart with under 3200 copies sold) nor any clear bump from the “Gotham” television show (as procedurals like Brubaker and Rucka’s “Gotham Central” aren’t actually available from DC in 2015).

Here’s DC’s Long Tail; despite all of the missing (OOP) books as discussed toward the top of the column, DC still scores 21% better sales in 2015.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

1644

—

1,181,218

—

$22,033,212

—

719

$13,402

2008

2057

25.12%

1,719,330

45.56%

$33,609,704

52.54%

836

$16,339

2009

2264

10.06%

1,902,181

10.64%

$37,816,864

12.52%

840

$16,704

2010

2442

7.86%

1,320,262

-30.59%

$25,982,910

-31.29%

541

$10,640

2011

2423

-0.07%

1,323,630

0.26%

$27,130,811

4.42%

546

$11,197

2012

2452

1.20%

1,206,198

-8.87%

$26,729,997

-1.48%

492

$10,901

2013

2551

4.04%

1,369,850

13.57%

$29,881,153

11.79%

537

$11,714

2014

2746

7.64%

1,638,901

19.64%

$35,388,570

18.43%

597

$12,887

2015

*1690

-38.46%

1,997,577

21.89%

$43,031,546

21.60%

1182

$25,462

DC has one book over 50K, nine more over 20K, and fifteen more that come in over 10K.

Our #3 Western Publisher in the Top 750 is Simon & Schuster, who is also the first of the mainstream book publishing so-called “Big Five.” They take this position with just seven placing titles, which total just under 900K in units and $13.2 million at retail.

Five of these books are from their Aladdin imprint, while one each are from Margaret K. Elderberry and Touchstone.

From Aladdin comes Rachel Renee Russell’s immensely successful “Dork Diaries,” with the best-selling (“Tales From A Not So Fabulous Pet Sitter”) selling 353K copies by itself. As noted toward the top, if all of the “Dork Diaries” books were in the database given to me, this would almost certainly change the charts a lot.

Touchstone books has just one title: Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” which sells almost 59K copies, down quite a bit from 130K in 2014.

The Margaret K. Elderberry imprint also has one book — Emily Carroll’s “Through The Woods,” which sells nearly 8K copies, compared to 5K in 2014.

Here is Simon & Schuster’s Long Tail, which includes the imprints that I’m aware of (Aladdin and Simon-named ones, as well as Atria, Atheneum, Gallery, Margaret K. Elderberry, Pocket and Touchstone):

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

12

—

8,317

—

$158,014

—

693

$13,167.83

2008

26

116.67%

14,917

79.36%

$211,798

34.04%

574

$8,146.08

2009

41

57.69%

109,558

634.45%

$1,430,544

575.43%

2,672

$34,891.32

2010

46

12.20%

214,828

96.09%

$2,660,094

85.95%

4,670

$57,828.13

2011

62

34.78%

187,531

-12.71%

$2,383,491

-10.40%

3025

$38,443.40

2012

63

1.61%

165,831

-11.57%

$2,844,453

19.34%

2632

$45,150.05

2013

67

6.35%

258,931

56.14%

$4,165,350

46.44%

3865

$62,169.40

2014

71

5.97%

383,878

48.25%

26.55%

5,407

$91,842.54

2015

*75

5.63%

910,341

237.14%

205.29%

12,138

$178,486.15

Simon & Schuster has one book over 300K, one over 200K, another over 100K, and two more over 50K.

Image Comics, our #4 largest Western publisher via the BookScan reporters, has 71 titles placing within the Top 750, selling 878K copies and $22.6 million.

This is what Image’s performance has looked like, in the Top 750, over the last decade:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

1

2,328

$30,148

2004

1

402

$5,206

2005

3

8,699

$100,236

2006

1

5,311

$113,465

2007

4

28,349

$344,026

2008

9

55,033

$830,574

2009

11

78,874

$1,210,094

2010

22

289,044

$6,479,930

2011

27

367,265

$8,670,917

2012

33

701,050

$20,389,762

2013

38

651,390

$19,371,269

2014

47

691,804

$17,554,492

2015

71

878,262

$22,587,672

That’s a terrific level of growth for Image, and they hit their best year ever in the Top 750, and that’s with a general softening of “The Walking Dead!”

Now “TWD” is still a great big money-maker — adding the third Compendium (48 issues for $60) really helps that bottom line — but the first “TWD” Compendia went from 68K in 2014 (and a crazy 96K in 2013) to “just” 60K in 2015 Further, new releases in the six-issue reprint series are slowing as well — in 2014, the high point was vol. 20 did over 45K, while in 2015, the high point (vol. 23) did just over 34K.

With that said, “TWD” is still a chart-monster, with all 12 hardcovers (vol. 11 sells almost 15K), and all 25 regular softcovers charting alongside the three Compendia. “TWD” has a massive 38 spaces among the Top 750, or a full five percent of listings! Vol. 1 of the regular softcover of “TWD” reports in with another 27K sold in 2015.

Image’s best-selling book in 2015 was “TWD” Compendium vol. 3 with 66K (and an additional 10K in a B&N “exclusive” cover down the charts), and vol. 1 & vol. 2 come in as #2 & #3.

After those three heavy-hitters, the spotlight changes over to Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ “Saga” with vol. 4 bringing in 41K copies, vol. 5 38K, and vol. 1 at 34K — the best-selling “Saga” in 2014 did just 38K, so this looks like a nicely growing franchise in the book market. All five softcovers place, as does just over 10K copies of the first hardcover.

“TWD” and “Saga” trade placements after that, all through Image’s top 12, but the first volumes of four more series manage to break into Image’s Top 20: Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s “The Wicked & The Divine” at #13 (16K), Scott Snyder & Jock’s “Wytches” at #16 (15K), Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky’s “Sex Criminals” at #18 (13K), and Kurtis Wiebe & Roc Upchurch’s “Rat Queens” at #20 (12.5K).

Here’s what Image’s Long Tail looks like; everything is right on track.:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

438

—

116,015

—

$2,313,477

—

265

$5,281.91

2008

515

17.58%

121,001

43.09%

$2,445,765

5.72%

235

$4,749.06

2009

571

10.87%

156,466

29.31%

$3,207,033

31.13%

274

$5,616.52

2010

642

12.43%

359,238

229.59%

$8,152,806

254.22%

560

$12,699.07

2011

749

16.66%

466,637

29.90%

$11,041,187

35.43%

623

$14,741.24

2012

868

15.89%

794,419

70.24%

$22,797,279

106.47%

915

$26,264.15

2013

14.52

994%

776,507

-2.25%

$22,085,860

-3.12%

781

$22,219.18

2014

1006

1.21%

830,735

6.98%

$20,309,973

-8.04%

826

$20,188.84

2015

*842

-16.30%

1,070,299

28.84%

$26,175,438

28.88%

1271

$31,087.22

Image has two titles over 50K, ten more over 20K, and another fourteen over 10K.

The #5 Western publisher within the Top 750 in 2015 is Marvel Comics, which places 63 titles for about 478K copies and $10.6 million sold.

Here is how Marvel looks in the Top 750:

Year

# of placing titles

Unit sales

Dollar sales

2003

73

455,553

$8,428,962

2004

50

227,985

$3,756,764

2005

26

153,317

$2,459,027

2006

33

294,852

$5,702,307

2007

37

376,918

$7,599,057

2008

38

303,639

$6,446,359

2009

34

226,541

$5,019,216

2010

33

206,273

$4,979,323

2011

27

128,364

$3,303,496

2012

32

141,145

$3,872,683

2013

39

187,598

$4,229,242

2014

53

342,706

$8,341,787

2015

*63

478,076

$10,611,981

It is another big year of growth for Marvel, as they have their best year in BookScan since we’ve been tracking.

Having said that, “Marvel” is practically synonymous with “comics” itself amongst “civilians” — and they had three movies with their brand in theaters in 2015 (“Ant-Man,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “Fantastic Four” — and their Icon imprint handles the comic book of “The Secret Service” from which the “Kingsman” movie was made) as well as two television shows (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Agent Carter”) so from that point of view, selling about half of the books that Image does in the Top 750 hardly seems like a triumph. Further, Marvel absolutely dominates periodical releases, which absolutely should translate into best-selling collections as well. For all of their amazing advantages, Marvel, I continue to believe, radically lags behind in book sales in any meaningful relative fashion.

But having said that, Marvel’s growth is real and solid, and goes in some interesting directions. Marvel’s #1 book in 2015 is “Civil War,” and they shift almost 47K copies in advance of the third Captain America movie having a similar title and story (we think) — this is more than triple the 15K copies it sold in 2014, as well as being twice the number of copies that they sold of last year’s #1 title, the first volume of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Coming in at #2 is the first volume of “Ms. Marvel,” which sells almost 27K copies. That’s a great, and just a tiny bit surprising (and a great improvement over the 10.7K copies it sold the previous year!) — no movie, no toys, just pure comics driving that amazing success. Vol. 2 of the series comes in at #7, with 15.7K sold, while vol. 3 comes in at #10 and 10.7K sold, and vol. 4 even squeaks in with 4K sold just in December, so this looks like really sustainable sales in a very real way.

At #3-5 for Marvel begins the (we assume) bookstore juggernaut for “Star Wars” — remember that these only really get a month or two of sales in the calendar year of 2015, so next year they should be even larger as these should be pretty perennial sellers. “Journey to Force Awakens” does ever-so slightly better than vol. 1 of the continuing series (by just 43 copies on around 16.8K of sales!), and the first “Darth Vader” isn’t much behind at 15.7K sold. A little farther down “Princess Leia” does somewhat disappointingly with just 7.3K copies sold, while “Kanan: The Last Padawan” sells a hair under 7K, and Marvel’s first repackaging of Dark Horse-published material moves about 3700 copies.

The rest of Marvel’s top 10 is filled out with the Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim “Infinity Gauntlet” with 13.8K sold as well as two volumes of “Deadpool” (“..Kills the Marvel Universe” takes the lead with 15.6K sold, while the $35 “…by Daniel Way” vol. 1 takes #2 with almost exactly 13K copies sold). There are 18 more “Deadpool” volumes throughout the rest of Marvel’s Top 750 places — nearly a third of the total! None sell even 10K copies though, which might be a direct result of the sheer number of in-print “Deadpool” books, and the lack of any clear roadmap of what to read and when and how.

What else? Hm, all four of Matt Fraction’s “Hawkeye” continue to chart, with v1 selling about 8.4K. The first volume of “Jessica Jones” comes in modestly at almost 7.3K copies sold, showing very little bounce from the extremely well-reviewed television show. Heck, the first volume of “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” sells just sixteen copies fewer then “Jessica Jones.” And that lack of “TV bounce” seems to follow through for “Daredevil,” as the character’s best-selling (“The Man Without Fear” by Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.) barely scrapes past 6K sold. For that matter, with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” acting as a $100m commercial, the “Age of Ultron” collection barely sells past 7K, and the best-selling “Ant-Man” volume moves barely 3K, not even placing in the Top 750 for the year. And you don’t even want to know how badly “Fantastic Four” or “S.H.I.E.L.D.” comics sell (about 500 copies on the higher ones). Even “The Secret Service” doesn’t make the Top 750, with barely 3400 copies sold.

Here is Marvel’s Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

1230

—

1,034,023

—

$19,947,737

—

841

$16,218

2008

1559

26.75%

1,032,394

-0.001%

$20,128,825

0.01%

662

$12,911

2009

2067

32.58%

954,335

-7.56%

$19,608,696

-2.58%

462

$9,487

2010

2551

23.42%

870,597

-8.77%

$19,485,662

-0.06%

352

$7,638

2011

2852

11.80%

852,187

-2.11%

$20,225,728

-3.80%

299

$7,092

2012

3083

8.10%

726,542

-14.74%

$18,848,013

-6.81%

236

$6,114

2013

3203

3.89%

730,826

0.59%

$17,820,299

-5.45%

228

$5,564

2014

3352

4.65%

918,595

25.69%

$24,369,961

36.75%

274

$7,270

2015

*1882

-43.85%

1,114,414

21.32%

$28,021,290

14.98%

592

$14,889

Marvel has two books over 20K, and another eight books that are over 10K.

The #6 publisher goes to Andrews McMeel. Andrews is a publisher that sometimes frustrates me by how they’ve been represented by BookScan — as I noted, it used to be that “humor” books like “Far Side” and “Calvin & Hobbes” used to rule the BookScan charts. Until, one day, poof! All of those books disappeared entirely from the dataset I was given, throwing off a whole lot of my comparables. And, for the most part, comic strip reprints have stayed out of these charts for half a decade. But, they’ve started creeping back into the listings for the last two years. I’m actually fine with comic strips and comic books co-existing in the same places — at least they’re both comics — but the inconsistency just drives me nucking futz.

Ultimately, I have 19 Andrews-published titles in the Top 750 in 2015, for 445K copies and $4.9 million in sales, but clearly that number would scale up significantly if it listed all of the strip collections they publish.

Most of the real action, however, for Andrews on the Top 750, is from Lincoln Peirce’s “Big Nate” books — ten of them chart this year, selling almost 90K at the high end (“Say Good-Bye to Dork Island”), with another three selling over 60K, and four more selling between 16 and 20K. Altogether the “Big Nate” books sell about 372K copies, for over $3.9 million.

Other than that, Andrews’ other big books are “The Oatmeal’s The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run” which does nearly 16K copies sold. While there are also two volumes of the “Phoebe and Her Unicorn” books, one selling 14K, the other moving 11K.

Andrews McMeel’s Long Tail chart is just about the most useless one of all because they publish a whole lot of comics (humor strips, like “Calvin & Hobbes”) that I no longer see in the data that gets leaked to me — almost certainly they’re doing several times better than this chart would suggest because of those books. Further, things appear and disappear in a way I’ve never been able to make sense of. Most of my comparatives are terrible and counterproductive here, and I really apologize for the weakness of my data in this specific instance.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

22

—

29,835

—

$461,238

—

1,356

$20,965.36

2008

20

-9.09%

25,115

-15.82%

$388,965

-15.67%

1,256

$19,448.25

2009

21

5.00%

26,205

4.34%

$401,982

3.35%

1,248

$19,142.00

2010

19

-9.52%

47,181

80.05%

$544,852

35.54%

2,483

$28,676.42

2011

17

-10.53%

116,850

147.66%

$1,222,171

124.31%

6,874

$71,892.41

2012

31

82.53%

225,546

93.02%

$2,737,935

124.02%

7,276

$88,320.48

2013

43

38.71%

343,681

52.38%

$3,747,799

36.88%

7,993

$87,158.12

2014

59

37.21%

373,713

8.74%

$4,387,252

17.06%

6,334

$74,360.21

2015

*76

28.81%

502,061

34.34%

$5,950,368

35.63%

6,606

$78,294.32

Andrews McMeel has four books over 50k, and seven others over 10k.

In 2013 there was a significant merger between Random House and Penguin Putnam, making the once so-called “Big Six” of mainstream book publishing now just the “Big Five.” The resulting publisher is known as Penguin Random House and was formally born on July 1, 2013. This entity is the #7 largest publisher of Western comics in 2015, via the BookScan reporters.

The “Big Five” publishers usually have a lot of multiple imprints, and I’m never 100% sure that I’ve properly identified each and every one of them. I do a lot of Googling to try and figure this stuff out!

The new Penguin Random House, as best as I can tell, has eleven distinct imprints that sell comics in some fashion that appear in the Top 750 list — Alfred A. Knopf, Ballantine, Bantam, Broadway, Del Rey, Dial, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Pantheon, Random House, Ten Speed, and Viking.

Combined, Penguin Random House imprints in the Top 750 in 2015 place 30 titles, for a bit over 338K units, and nearly $6.2 million in dollar sales. Looking at those imprints in alphabetical order:

Alfred A. Knopf Books For Younger Readers places four books into the Top 750, all from Jarrett J. Krosocza’s “Lunch Lady” series. Aimed squarely at, as the imprint’s name implies, younger readers, the best-seller of the seven is “Lunch Lady & The Cyborg Substitute” with sales just over 10K. The four volumes combined are about 22K copies, and $149K in retail dollars.

Ballantine places just one title in the Top 750: Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Seconds,” which sells 14.8K copies in its second year of release.

Bantam co-produces (with Dynamite) the comics adaptations of George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones.” The first two place, with vol. 1 selling 4366 copies.

Broadway Books has just one placing title this year: Max Brooks’ “Harlem Hellfighters” that sells 4223 copies.

Del Rey hits the Top 750 with two books this year — both well under 5K copies — Doug Wenzel’s adaptation of “The Hobbit” and Diana Gabaldon’s “Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel.”

Dial places a single title — the YA focused “Roller Girl” by Victoria Jamieson which racks up over an impressive 31k sold.

G.P. Putnam’s Sons has a single book: a comic adaptation of Marie Lu’s “Legend” with 3847 sold.

Pantheon is their “literary” comics wing, and has some of PRH’s best-sellers. There are ten different Pantheon books within the Top 750, the best-selling being Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis,” and art spiegelman’s “Maus.” “Persepolis” is discussed above, as it makes the entire Top 20 of the list, with 58K copies of vol. 1, while “Maus” vol. 1 sells 36K in its 29th year in print. As usual, that drops to 16K for vol. 2, while the complete edition sells 14.5K. Richard Maguire’s “Here” racks up 10.8K in sales this year, while the debut of “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage” does decently at 8623 sold.

Random House Books For Younger Readers is mostly the domain of Jennifer L. Holm and her multiple series: “Babymouse” (of which “Queen of the World” is the best-seller, at an impressive 17K copies sold), as well as “Super Amoeba,” but Judd Winick cracks the Holm club with the first volume of “Hilo” which notches sales of just over 6K.

Ten Speed Press brings us a single tile: “The Comics Story of Beer,” which sells 7.6K.

And finally, Viking makes the list with “The Last Kids on Earth,” a juvie-“Walking Dead”-style book, at just under 7.5K, whew.

Here’s what the Long-Tail for the merged company looked like in 2015:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2013

282

—

447,174

—

$7,259,364

—

1,586

$25,742.43

2014

252

-10.64%

428,634

-4.15%

$7,415,712

2.15%

1,701

$29,427.43

2015

*450

78.57%

513,611

19.83%

$8,517,761

14.49%

1,141

$18,928.36

However, I’m not willing to pull an “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia” moment, so let’s look at the individual pieces of the past. This is what Penguin Putnam (Ace, Berkley Books, Dial, Dutton, Gotham Books, Grossett & Dunlap, Hudson Street, InkLit, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel, Plume, Price Stern Sloan, Puffin, Putnam, Razorbill, Riverhead and Viking) used to look like alone).

Penguin Random House has one title over 50K, three books over 20K, and another six books over 10K.

The #8 largest publisher with Western comics in BookScan 2015 is another of the “big five”: HarperCollins. Harper has twelve books in the Top 750 this year, summing up to 120K copies sold, for $1.8 million. There’s a lot of imprints with the word “Harper” in the title in the Long Tail (Harper, Harper Paperbacks, Harper Teen, Harper Festival, Harper Teen, and so on), and Harper is also IT books, William Morrow, and Zondervan.

Harper’s biggest hit is Noelle Stevenson’s “Nimona,” which racks up an impressive 32K sold (as well as nearly 10k more in hardcover), while they also have two “Big Nate” volumes (which, yes, is published by two different publishing houses) — “Triple Play” sells 16.5K, while “Genius Mode” sells 13.6K copies. The perennial “Understanding Comics” shifts over 13.5K copies.

Their other imprints don’t show in the Top 750.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

18

—

36,940

—

$600,540

—

2052

$33,363.33

2008

36

100.00%

48,264

30.66%

$863,808

43.84%

1341

$23,994.67

2009

42

16.67%

81,774

69.43%

$1,308,891

15.53%

1947

$31,164.07

2010

41

-2.38%

64,429

-21.21%

$719,328

-45.04%

1571

$17,544.59

2011

50

21.95%

75,394

17.02%

$1,083,609

50.64%

1508

$21,672.18

2012

80

60.00%

159,573

111.65%

$2,113,744

95.07%

1995

$26,421.80

2013

68

-15.00%

197,595

23.83%

$2,667,933

26.22%

2906

$39,234.31

2014

115

69.12%

158,193

-19.94%

$2,398,836

-10.09%

1376

$21,042.42

2015

*109

-5.22%

188,181

18.96%

$2,646,378

10.32%

1726

$24,278.70

Harper has one titles over 20K, and three more over 10K.

#9 on this year’s list will be Dark Horse Comics, as they place 16 titles for 112K and $2.3 million.

Dark Horse’s #1 book of the year, like last year, is “Plants Vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon” which nearly racks up 18.3K copies. They also sell over 10K copies of another “PvZ” book, “Bully For You.” Their other strong selling for the year is “Serenity: Leaves On The Wind” with 10.5K sold.

Here’s what Dark Horse’s Western performance looks like in the Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

597

—

413,022

—

$7,607,264

—

692

$14,744.90

2008

734

22.95%

552,815

33.85%

$9,329,828

22.64%

753

$12,710.94

2009

798

8.72%

455,924

-17.53%

$7,757,240

-16.86%

571

$9,720.85

2010

955

19.67%

445,248

-2.34%

$7,852,063

1.22%

466

$8,222.06

2011

1025

7.33%

389,514

-12.52%

$7,102,710

-9.54%

380

$6,929.47

2012

1133

10.54%

377,322

-3.13%

$6,907,772

-2.74%

333

$6,096.89

2013

1238

9.27%

383,391

1.61%

$7,391,831

7.01%

310

$5,970.78

2014

1420

14.70%

421,708

9.99%

$8,982,411

21.52%

297

$6,325.64

2015

*947

-33.31%

376,231

-10.78%

$8,120,937

-9.59%

397

$8,575.44

Dark Horse’s Manga offerings are up in that section. Dark Horse is one of the rare publishers that does a significant business in both Eastern and Western comics, and I’m sure they’d prefer all of their numbers to be represented together. In which case, their Long Tail actually looks like this:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

938

—

662,965

—

$10,936,728

—

707

$11,659.62

2008

1075

14.61%

801,796

20.94%

$12,506,698

14.36%

746

$11,634.14

2009

1253

16.56%

682,421

-14.89%

$10,672,933

-14.66%

545

$8,517.90

2010

1428

13.97%

639,742

-6.25%

$10,485,140

-1.76%

448

$7,342.54

2011

1522

6.58%

578,843

-9.52%

$9,704,940

-7.44%

380

$6,376.44

2012

1626

6.83%

489,695

-15.40%

$8,538,810

-12.02%

301

$5,251.42

2013

1759

8.18%

486,929

-0.56%

$9,070,394

6.23%

277

$5,156.56

2014

1979

12.51%

522,602

7.33%

$10,599,661

16.86%

264

$5,356.07

2015

*1250

-36.84%

511,675

-2.09%

$10,359,104

-2.27%

409

$8,287.28

Dark Horse has three titles over 10K.

To round out this year’s Top 10 publishers, we have at #10 Henry N. Abrams, which publishes both as Abrams Comicarts as well as Amulet Books, though everything charting this year is just Amulet. They place seven books into the Top 750 for almost 109K in sales and $1.2 million.

Amulet publishes the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books, but as noted before, these don’t show on our BookScan list because of how they list their BISACs. Their best-selling book is “El Deafo” which racks up a very impressive 73K sold.

Other than that, they sell OK (sub-10K) numbers of three of “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales” and three volumes of “Explorer.”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2008

10,031

—

$148,675

—

$148,675

—

3344

$49,558.33

2009

25

733.33%

24,116

140.41%

$640,635

330.90%

965

$25,625.40

2010

41

64.00%

48,240

100.03%

$1,109,444

73.18%

1177

$27,059.61

2011

49

19.51%

31,846

-33.98%

$731,054

-34.11%

650

$14,919.47

2012

62

26.53%

37,522

17.82%

$756,650

3.50%

605

$12,204.03

2013

70

12.90%

72,538

93.32%

$3,278,063

333.23%

1036

$46,829.47

2014

88

25.71%

74,083

2.13%

$2,324,820

-29.10%

842

$26,418.41

2015

*92

4.55%

145,633

96.58%

$1,898,267

-18.35%

1583

$20,633.34

Henry N. Abrams has one book over 50k, and none over 10k.

That’s the Top 10 Western publishers, but there are a few more that I’d like to mention.

In the Book publishing world, they talk about “The Big Five” — that would be: Hachette, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. We’ve covered three of those above, but we should at least glance at the other two, I think. In alphabetical order:

Hachette includes the imprints of Little, Brown, Grand Central, and Yen.

Little, Brown is the home of “Tintin,” and they place three books into the Top 750 for a total of 12,579 copies and just over $160K in sales. However, only one of those is “Tintin” (the 3-in-one “Adventures of Tintin v1” sells just over 4700 copies), which seems crazy low to this observer. They do much better with a volume of “Monster High,” which sells 12.4K copies.

Even better than that, Yen, which mostly prints Manga, has a “western” hit with Svetlana Chmaova’s “Awkward,” which sells 16.9K.

Here’s the Long Tail of just the Western books for Hachette, which is very mixed this year

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

15

—

39,181

—

$689,383

—

2,612

$45,958.87

2008

18

20.00%

37,519

-4.24%

$596,609

-13.46%

2,084

$33,144.94

2009

18

—-

40,172

7.07%

$642,935

7.76%

2,232

$35,718.61

2010

19

5.56%

160,992

300.76%

$3,097,996

381.85%

8,473

$163,052.42

2011

24

26.32%

88,131

-45.26%

$1,273,500

-58.89%

3,672

$53,063

2012

28

16.67%

110,897

25.83

$1,565,744

22.95

3,961

$55,919.43

2013

24

-14.29%

39,093

-65.75%

$584,783

-62.65%

1,629

$24,365.96

2014

32

33.33%

38,853

-0.61%

$593,667

1.52%

1,214

$18,552.10

2015

*93

290.63%

76,787

97.63%

$1,066,510

79.65%

826

$11,467.85

And if you add the Manga from Yen, it looks like this:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

25

—

52,077

—

$836,832

—

2,083

$33,473.28

2008

180

332.00%

147,645

183.51%

$1,834,469

119.22%

1,367

$16,985.82

2009

229

112.04%

371,134

151.37%

$4,340,048

132.78%

1,621

$18,952.17

2010

363

58.52%

721,975

94.53%

$9,748,867

124.63%

1,999

$26,856.38

2011

484

33.33%

852,256

18.05%

$11,227,466

15.17%

1761

$23,197.24

2012

576

19.01%

758,845

-10.96%

$10,301,009

-8.25%

1,317

$17,883.70

2013

678

17.71%

731,473

-3.61%

$10,300,204

—-%

1,079

$15,192.04

2014

808

19.17%

720,988

-1.43%

$10,579,169

2.71%

892

$13,093.03

2015

*742

-8.17%

994,407

37.92%

$14,304,955

35.22%

1340

$19,278.92

Hachette has two titles over 10K, on the Western charts.

Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan, has (at least) these imprints: FirstSecond, Metropolitan, Picador, and Square Fish. Those imprints all individually made the Top 750, but there are others down into the Long Tail as well — I have also identified Farrar Straus Giroux, Henry Holt, Hill + Wang, Roaring Brook, Rodale Press, St. Martins Griffin, Times books, and Tor. Holtzbrinck also distributes several other publishers, including Bloomsbury, Drawn & Quarterly, Papercutz, and Seven Seas. Holtzbrinck-owned companies placed sixteen titles in the Top 750, for about 98K and a bit under $1.5 million combined.

The best-seller here from First Second is 14.3K copies of Scott McCloud’s “The Sculptor,” followed closely (like “28 copies” closely!) by Mariko Tamaki’s “This One Summer.” They also do very well with Corey Doctorow and Jen Wang’s “In Real Life,” which moves almost 12K copies.

Square Fish’s top title is Gene Yang’s “American Born Chinese” (just over 29K), followed by Hope Larson’s Adaptation of “A Wrinkle In Time,” which sells just over 12K. Picador’s best-seller is “The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil” (just over 5K), while Metropolitan’s best-seller was “The Arab of the Future” which sold 4453.

Here’s Holtzbrinck’s Long Tail (again, I might have missed an imprint somewhere — trying to tease them all out is a difficult task from their Byzantine org chart).

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

39

—

31,452

—

$559,681

—

806

$14,350.79

2008

66

69.23%

63,473

101.81%

$1,132,767

102.40%

962

$17,163.14

2009

88

33.34%

84,090

32.48%

$1,438,044

26.95%

956

$16,341.41

2010

108

22.73%

68,599

-18.42%

$1,085,311

-24.53%

635

$10,049.18

2011

139

28.70%

114,243

66.54%

$1,794,084

65.31%

822

$12,907.08

2012

165

18.71%

126,745

10.94%

$2,077,143

15.78%

768

$12,588.75

2013

187

13.33%

142,375

12.33%

$2,395,569

15.33%

761

$12,810.53

2014

222

18.72%

190,682

33.93%

$3,096,858

23.27%

859

$13,949.81

2015

*104

-53.15%

99,223

-47.96%

$1,804,001

-41.75%

954

$17,346.16

Holtzbrinck has one book over 20K, and four more books over 10K.

While not one of the “Big Five,” there are other publishers that I would consider both “significant” as well as bookmarket-first who did well in the Top 750: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2 titles), and Hyperion (5) Joe Books (4), and Papercutz (2).

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishes comics both as HMH and Mariner. They place two titles into the Top 750 that total 61K and $926K in sales.

Mariner’s best-seller is Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” which surges insanely forward thanks to a stage play adaptation up to 52K sold (it was 18K last year). They also place 8911 copies of Bechdel’s “Are You My Mother?”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

4

—

20,474

—

$434,495

—

5119

$108,623.75

2008

6

50.00%

14,183

-30.73%

$307,019

-29.34%

2363

$51,169.83

2009

14

133.33%

24,568

73.22%

$436,328

42.12%

1755

$31,166.29

2010

17

21.43%

29,163

18.70%

$532,539

22.05%

1715

$31,325.82

2011

18

5.88%

24,239

-16.88%

$450,536

-15.40%

1347

$25,029.78

2012

21

16.67%

23,562

-2.79%

$402,575

-10.65%

1122

$1,9170.24

2013

29

38.10%

44,558

89.11%

$687,920

70.88%

1536

$23,721.38

2014

27

-6.90%

44,558

26.50%

$552,884

-19.63%

1213

$20,477.19

2015

*33

22.22%

78,357

239.25%

$1,214,786

219.72%

2374

$36,811.70

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just the one book over 50K.

Hyperion is, like Marvel, also owned by Disney. Technically, that probably means I should fold them together, but I resist, how I resist (largely because they are distributed separately). However, if we did that, the combined entity would move one place forward, to #4. Hyperion has five placing titles, doing 56K, and $744K. All are Rick Riordan adaptations — the most successful is “Percy Jackson” (“Lightning Thief” does almost 17.5K). At least we can no longer say they outsell Marvel.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

10

—

39,121

—

$336,771

—

3912

$33,677.10

2008

19

90.00%

41,005

4.82%

$409,051

21.46%

2158

$21,529.00

2009

24

26.32%

23,301

-43.18%

$234,078

-42.78%

971

$9,753.25

2010

26

8.33%

30,860

32.44%

$314,067

34.17%

1187

$12,079.50

2011

29

11.54%

46,553

50.85%

$392,652

25.02%

1605

$13,539.72

2012

31

6.90%

33,105

-28.89%

$376,735

-4.05%

1068

$12,152.74

2013

33

6.45%

102,537

209.73%

$1,298,672

244.72%

3107

$39,353.70

2014

38

15.15%

77,045

-24.86%

$1,015,188

-21.83%

2028

$26,715.49

2015

*57

50.00%

63,290

-17.85%

$831,477

-18.10%

1110

$14,587.32

Hyperion has two books over 10K.

Joe Books is something you don’t see all that often — a new publisher that cracks right into the Top 750. They mostly just do screen-cap fumetti. But their screen-caps of “Inside-Out” sells 22.4K, while “Frozen” moves 21.5K. All together, they placed four titles for 56K and $907K.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2014

1

—

22,740

—

$340,873

—

22,740

$340,873

2015

*13

1200%

66,375

291.88%

$1,047,511

307.30%

5,106

$80,577,77

Joe Books has two titles over 20K, and no more over 10K.

Papercutz, which has two titles placing, for 14K copies and $99k. Both are Lego’s “Ninjago,” the best-selling being vol. 9 (“Night of the Nindroids”) with just under 10K copies sold.They have nothing that charts in the Top 750 that isn’t “Ninjago.”

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

65

—

20,121

—

$179,373

—

310

$2,759.58

2008

103

58.46%

39,949

98.54%

$368,008

105.16%

388

$3,572.89

2009

141

36.89%

60,911

52.47%

$594,199

61.46%

432

$4,214.18

2010

190

34.75%

76,986

26.39%

$772,290

29.97%

405

$4,064.68

2011

210

10.53%

76,139

-1.10%

$657,997

-14.80%

363

$3,133.32

2012

258

22.86%

172,744

126.88%

$1,343,044

104.11

670

$5,205.60

2013

298

15.50%

220,048

27.38%

$1,670,814

24.41%

738

$5,606.76

2014

354

18.79%

144,206

-34.47%

$1,173,414

-29.77%

407

$3,314.73

2015

*187

-47.18%

80,223

-44.37%

$707,383

-39.72%

429

$3,782.80

Papercutz has no books with sales over 10K this year.

Outside of those bookstore-native publishers, we have several Direct Market-native publishers who placed more than three titles into the Top 750. Those would be: IDW (9), Oni (6), BOOM! (4), Drawn & Quarterly (4), Archie (2), and Titan (1).

IDW places nine books into the Top 750 for nearly 94K and $1.3 million in sales.

IDW bought Top Shelf in 2015, so a significant portion of that is from the sales of Congressman John Lewis’ “March” — vol. 1 sells 29.7K, while vol. 2 does 22.7K. In 2014, Top Shelf alone didn’t quite manage 17K for “March” vol. 1, so that’s excellent growth in distribution.

Past that it’s kids comics, with 8.9K of “Skylanders: The Kaos Trap” (and almost 7K of “Champions”) and 7.7K copies of “Angry Birds” vol. 1, and 6.9K copies of “My Little Pony.”

Their best-seller is “Skylanders: The Kaos Trap,” with nearly 12K sold. They also did well with the final “Locke and Key” hardcover (8602 sold) and “My Little Pony” digest (7753 sold).

This is IDW’s Long Tail, now including Top Shelf beginning in 2015:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

233

—

102,118

—

$2,090,647

—

438

$8,972.73

2008

335

43.78%

146,125

43.09%

$2,766,505

32.33%

436

$8,258.22

2009

477

42.39%

215,907

47.76%

$4,346,836

57.12%

453

$9,112.86

2010

623

30.61%

161,578

-25.16%

$3,653,680

-15.95%

259

$5,864.65

2011

785

26.00%

206,136

27.58%

$4,884,606

33.69%

263

$6,222,43

2012

937

19.36%

162,599

-21.12%

$4,329,973

-11.35%

174

$4,621.10

2013

1059

13.02%

180,694

11.13%

$4,443,372

2.62%

171

$4,195.82

2014

1134

7.08%

228,895

26.68%

$5,309,992

19.50%

200

$4,641.40

2015

*959

-15.43%

310,512

35.66%

$6,478,023

22.00%

324

$6,754.98

This is what Top Shelf looked like own their own, prior to the purchase:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

88

—

23,317

—

$768,122

—

265

$8,728.66

2008

96

9.09%

24,494

5.05%

$583,498

-24.04%

255

$6,078.10

2009

105

9.38%

46,438

89.59%

$1,025,119

75.69%

442

$9,763.04

2010

112

6.67%

28,911

-37.74%

$702,241

-31.50%

258

$6,270.01

2011

135

20.54%

35,047

21.22%

$791,941

12.77%

260

$5,866.23

2012

136

0.74%

35,433

1.10

$739,701

-6.60%

261

$5,438.98

2013

147

8.09%

47,565

34.24%

$900,059

21.68%

324

$6,122.85

2014

148

0.68%

40,565

-14.72%

$785,952

-12.68%

274

$5,310.49

IDW has two books over 20K, and no more over 10K.

Oni Press continues to do solidly with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim,” although the book doesn’t sell as well as it once did, with only vol. 1, 2 and 6 in various formats charting in the Top 750 any longer. Vol. 1 sells 6.9k in (black-and-white) paperback, and just over 5K in (full-color) hardcover, and the (b&w) boxed set moves 4.8K as well. “Scott Pilgrim” is joined by “Rick and Morty” as Oni sells 4513 copies of vol. 1.

Here’s Oni’s Long Tail, still largely dropping as “Scott Pilgrim” softens over time:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

125

—

11,294

—

$141,829

—

90

$1,134.63

2008

138

10.40%

21,843

93.40%

$320,799

126.19%

158

$2,324.63

2009

149

7.97%

51,584

136.13%

$713,121

122.30%

346

$4,786.05

2010

156

4.70%

446,791

866.14%

$5,882,247

824.86%

2864

$37,706.71

2011

177

13.46%

162,275

-63.68%

$2,786,438

-52.63%

917

$15,742.59

2012

171

-3.39%

80,560

-50.36%

$1,594,016

-42.79%

471

$9,321.73

2013

195

14.04%

68,140

-15.42%

$1,401,748

-12.06%

349

$7,188.45

2014

213

9.23%

61,584

-9.62%

$1,303,069

-7.04%

289

$6,117.70

2015

*165

-22.54%

65,254

5.96%

$1,478,997

11.35%

395

$8,963.62

Oni has no books over 10K.

BOOM! Studios sells four titles into the Top 750, for almost 40K and $588k in sales. “Adventure Time” mostly collapses for some reason in the book channel, making only one appearance with the fourth OGN selling just 4K copies — no, the big hit is the first volume of “Lumberjanes,” which sells 22.6K copies.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

21

—

10,462

—

$246,984

—

498

$11,761.14

2008

44

109.52%

10,943

4.60%

$394,361

59.67%

249

$8,962.75

2009

93

111.36%

25,378

131.91%

$485,485

23.11%

273

$5,220.27

2010

202

117.20%

64,770

155.22%

$1,140,019

134.82%

321

$5,643.66

2011

253

25.25%

75,472

16.52%

$1,435,514

25.92%

298

$5,673.97

2012

307

21.34%

59,758

-20.82%

$1,160,894

-19.13%

195

$3,781.41

2013

347

13.03%

86,637

44.98%

$1,650,374

42.16%

250

$4,756.12

2014

388

11.82%

108,504

25.24%

$1,894,658

14.80%

280

$4,883.14

2015

*295

-23.97%

126,029

16.15%

$2,159,071

13.96%

427

$7,318.88

BOOM! just has the one book over 20K, and nothing further over 10K.

To my sudden surprise, we’ve never had a Long Tail for Drawn & Quarterly in the past. That should change since they placed four tittles into the Top 750 this year, with their top book being 11.4K copies of Kate Beaton’s “Step Aside Pops!” (“Hark A Vagrant” also charts with just over 4K sold). Adrian Tomine’s newest book, “Killing and Dying,” also charts for 9.2K sold.

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

62

—

24,689

—

$500,764

—

398

$8,076.84

2008

82

32.26%

42,038

70.27%

$912,774

82.28%

513

$11,131.39

2009

107

30.49%

42,957

2.19%

$920,014

0.79%

401

$8,598.26

2010

126

17.76%

44,737

4.14%

$1,009,387

9.71%

355

$8,011.01

2011

145

15.08%

62,286

39.23%

$1,399,793

38.68%

430

$9,653.74

2012

155

6.90%

43,098

-30.81%

$926,233

-33.83%

278

$5,975.70

2013

189

21.94%

41,887

-2.81%

$893,905

-3.49%

222

$4,729.66

2014

205

8.47%

46,030

9.90%

$1,032,032

15.45%

225

$5,034.30

2015

*219

6.83%

73,471

59.62%

$1,680,878

62.87%

335

$7,675.24

Drawn & Quarterly has one book over 10K.

Archie Comics places just two books in the Top 750, selling 7474 copies combined and $81K. Probably not worth even mentioning if I hadn’t already built them a chart and everything. Their best-seller was a “Sonic” collection with 3869 copies.

Here’s Archie’s Long Tail:

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

18

—

12,443

—

$103,998

—

691

$5,777.67

2008

26

44.44%

25,046

101.29%

$220,207

111.74%

963

$8,469.50

2009

33

26.92%

26,998

7.79%

$246,557

11.97%

818

$7,471.42

2010

43

30.30%

24,828

-8.04%

$227,014

-7.93%

577

$5,279.40

2011

62

44.19%

51,551

-107.63%

$528,353

132.74

831

$8,521.82

2012

85

37.10

66,988

29.95

$797,165

50.88

788

$9,378.41

2013

110

29.41%

79,978

19.39%

$974,889

22.29%

727

$8,862.63

2014

148

92,953%

79,978

16.22%

$1,170,486

20.06%

628

$7,908.69

2015

*165

11.49%

75,222

-19.08%

$892,756

-23.73%

456

$5,410.64

Archie has no books over 10K.

Titan Comics’ multi-title appearance in last year’s list caused me to build them a Long Tail, but this year they only place a single title, “Minions,” which sells 12.2K copies. Still, why waste a chart?

Year

# of

listed items

% Change

Total Unit Sold

% Change

Total $ Sold

% Change

Av. Sale

per title

Av. $ per title

2007

104

—

10,782

—

$284,570.90

—

104

$2,736.26

2008

114

9.62%

15,627

44.94%

$478,790.65

68.25%

137

$4,199.92

2009

125

9.65%

12,957

-17.09%

$225,008.15

-53.00%

104

$1,800.07

2010

134

7.20%

11,766

-9.19%

$227,861.70

1.27%

88

$1,700.46

2011

133

—–%

11,199

-4.82%

$227,059.05

-0.04%

84

$1,707.21

2012

142

6.77%

17,612

57.26%

$367,913.49

62.03%

124

$2,590.94

2013

158

11.27%

25,980

47.51%

$529,217.08

43.84%

164

$3,349.48

2014

213

34.81%

43,669

68.09%

$857,608.68

62.05%

205

$4,026.33

2015

*175

-17.84%

58,544

34.06%

$887,084

3.44%

335

$5,069.05

Titan places one book over 10K.

No publisher that has not been mentioned placed more than three titles within the Top 750, which leaves me with 20 from 16 different smaller publishers.

There are two comics that sell 20K or over in this cohort: just over 44K copies of Roz Chast’s “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” from Bloomsbury (down from 73K in 2014), and 30.1K copies of “Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made” from Candlewick. Them’s big numbers.

Then there are four titles that sold over 10K — “Username: Evie” (15.6K) from Running Press, “Quest For The Golden Apple” (13.8K) from Sky Pony Press, “The Odyssey” by Gareth Hinds (12K) from Candlewick, and George R.R. Martin’s “The Hedge Knight” (10.2K) from Jet City Comics (which is a wholly owned imprint of Amazon).

The remaining fourteen titles came in under 10K, and include 7878 of Jeff Smith’s complete “Bone” and 6899 copies of Phoebe Gloeckner’s “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” which was also a motion picture in 2015.

One final little bit of number crunching before I go for the year. If we look at the entirety of the 22K-long “Long Tail” BookScan list, how do the publishers stack up in 2015? We’ll consider it in dollars, this time, including both “east” and “west” comics, and round everything to the nearest hundred-thousand just for ease of presentation.

#1 DC — $43.0 Million

#2 Viz — $28.1

#3 Marvel Comics — $28.0

#4 Image Comics — $26.2

#5 Scholastic — $17.2

#6 Hachette — $14.3

#7 Simon & Schuster — $13.4

#8 Kodansha — $10.9

#9 Dark Horse — $10.4

#10 Penguin Random House — $8.5

And that’s pretty much what BookScan in 2015 looks like to these eyes.